Is there any way to tell if Google has banned a site?

[carol]

I've been approached by a potential client to help market his newly-renovated site. A current client had recommended me to this gentleman months ago to do the website re-do, but they had already selected another firm. Now that the site is "finished," the potential client is complaining that no one can find it. The design firm is saying that they were paid to design the site, which they did - in Adobe GoLive 5, which I'm not familiar with - and they don't do SEO. The homepage contains only a Flash intro, and each interior page is top-heavy with a lot of scripting appearing before any content. When I looked at their old site, I found that the developer was using it as a hidden link farm for other sites (dozens of them) the developer had created. This new site has a new URL, although the old URL now points to the new one.

So, could Google have banned both URLs due to the hidden link farm? And if not, am I crazy to take this job?? While he assured me I could have access to the files on the webserver, I don't get the idea he's going to want me to change the content, or how anything looks.

Thanks for your input! carol

[cbp]

1. Google can not index flash sites, so they could not be listed for that reason.

2. If a site has links pointing to it from sites that are in the Google index, they should be in the index. If they are not in the index, most likely they have been banned.

However, almost all cases of allegedly "banned" websites that I have come across are not really banned (eg they ranked poorly; they had no links to the site; site was down during last googlebit visit etc)

If it was a hidden link problem, rumours are that the Google algorithm automatically detects it (its not very good at it), bans the site, periodically rechecks the site to see if cleaned up, makes the site spend time in the penalty box (eg a month), then reindexes them if still clean - I am not totally sure that this is accurate, but is my best guess. However a lot of hidden links gets missed by Google despite spam reports.

If it was a penalty and the site is clean, send a message to webmaster@google.com with the subject line 'reinclusion request' - plead the case ... and be patient.

Can you post the URL?

CBP

[carol]

Thanks for your response. I know Google can't index flash, but there are a lot of sites out there using it. Do those site developers submit an interior page to Google for inclusion??

The old site with the hidden links is pointing to the new site - not sure if any other sites are linking to the new site.

If they hire me and I can't get the new site included, I will take your suggestion about the "reinclusion request." (I don't feel I can post the URL at this point because they're not my client - yet...)

Thanks again,
carol

[janeth]

I will ask a question,
lets say that for the major key words like

Computers - the two top sites do not contain the word Computers in the page copy.

The only reason they are there is because of links coming to the site.

So with this in mind could you not take a total flash site work on nothing but links and get it ranked number one for a major key word.

[rlrouse]

So with this in mind could you not take a total flash site work on nothing but links and get it ranked number one for a major key word.

Yes, you could indeed, but it would take a ton of links for a super competitive keyword like computers (Apple has 89,000 backlinks in Google, Dell has 27,600. On Alltheweb, Apple has 3,298,204 backlinks, Dell 536,303).

[bbauer]

I'd like to ask a question about hidden links.

Obviously, if one makes the link the same color as the page background it is a hidden link.

But what about a link that has the same color as the rest of the text on the page so that unless folks happen to hit it with their mouse they don't realize that it is a link because there is nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the text on the page.

Is that considered hidden links too?

[rlrouse]

This could be seen by Google as an attempt to "fool" the search engines. The bots wouldn't pick it up but a competitor might. If it seems like a gray area, I tend to avoid it.

[janeth]

I agree with rlrouse
It is better to be up front on everything and not try anything sneaky

[bbauer]

I use color both ways in some of my blog links.
Often I use blue and underline on a blog where the links don't actually show up as links at all and one must "tumble" to the fact that they really are links due to the way the blog template produces them so by making them blue and underlined it leaves no doubt that they are links and sometimes I will make the text the same color as the font and then sometimes I leave them "natural" as produced by the blog.

So in a case like that I would tend to think they would
have an awfully hard time penalizing or even deciding which was which and why.

[spiderbait]

The simplest way that I know to see if Google has banned a site is as follows:

Search on Google for your domain name exactly as written, minus the .com, .net, .org or whatever.

eg. to see if webproworld.com has been banned, you would search for "webproworld"

In the results you will see either:
links to webproworld.com if the site is actively indexed (this is also useful for seeing if Google has already indexed the domain)
or,
if the site is banned you will see no results or only results for other sites that contain the word webproworld, (likely because they have links to webproworld.com}


Hope this helps. It works in most cases where the domain name is unique enough that it wouldn't appear as a commonly used term on too many other sites.

[salubritas]

Marketleap does a free search engine saturation checker that tells you how many pages of your site are indexed by Google and other search engines. This should tell you if your site is indexed. Its at http://www.marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm.

By the way, the Google syntax they use is "site:www.mysite.com inurl:www.mysite.com" if you want to do it manually.

[carol]

Thanks spiderbait - I took your advice and searched Google for the new domain name, and what came up was "Welcome to <new domain name>" but the URL was the OLD domain name. Then when I clicked on "Similar pages," all the pages in the hidden link farm showed up!!

So the bottom line here is, it looks like the site is NOT banned (although it probably should have been), and the new domain name has just not been indexed yet.

salubritas, thanks for your input. I tried the link and it wasn't working - I'll try back later.
carol

[salubritas]

Looks like a full stop (period) crept into the end of the URL. It should be

http://www.marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm

[spiderbait]

You're welcome Carol... glad I could help :)

[kidino]

OK ... I have a situation.

I have a domain that I use to make a few other sub-domains. I can't get my latest sub-domain website listed in Google. I check this by doing the query "allinurl:mydomain.com". But when you type in the "subdomain.mydomain.com", Google returns my subdomain website as result. And I see that they also have cached my subdomain website.

Now ... why isn't Google indexing my site?

[minstrel]

why isn't Google indexing my site?
Can you give us the URL?

[HillsCap]

I'd say the client was sold a bill of goods by that so-called 'web designer'.

SEO is part-and-parcel of web design. A website that can't be found in the search engines is no good to a company, no matter how much they've spent on its design or how great it looks.

By creating a site that is more difficult (if not impossible) to get properly index in the search engines, the 'web designer' cost the company more money by having to RE-design the site to take into account SEO.

That would be somewhat akin to a general contractor building a house, but neglecting to install the necessary wiring for lighting, appliances, etc., then claiming, "Oh, we just build the house, it's someone else's responsibility to wire it." Well, AFTER the house is built is a pretty bad time to start thinking about running wires, especially since those wires have to go inside the walls. They are a part of the basic infrastructure of the house, as SEO is a part of the basic infrastructure of website design and development.

Who REALLY is to blame? Well, judging by the fact that the company had one website that was used as a secret link farm, and one website that wasn't built properly, I'd have to say the root blame lies with whomever at that company is responsible for that company's website. But since the company is probably run by some cheapskate boss who didn't bother to hire someone who knew what they were doing to undertake ongoing website administration, instead 'assigning' website duties to some poor schmuck who already worked there (i.e. Bob on the loading/unloading dock, or Billy the half-retarded kid who puts together boxes in the shipping department), in an effort to 'cut costs' (which ALWAYS ends up costing more in the long run), we all know it's management's fault.

But the 'web developer' is also partly to blame for suckering in yet another website neophyte and taking their money while providing inferior product.

If I were you, I'd politely decline this job... I can almost guarantee it'll be way too much headache, and they'll try to squeeze you for every last nickel on your fee. And since they STILL won't have someone to perform ongoing website maintenance, content development, and general tweaking, the site still probably wouldn't rank well, and they'd blame who?

You, of course, and demand some (or all) of their money back.

Of course, if you lock them into an airtight, signed, sealed, delivered and guaranteed pay-for-play contract, and you're willing to do the work, and they're willing to pay you your going rate (the AVERAGE going rate is $75/hour for experienced website designers/marketers; $30/hour for less experienced) (don't lower your rate for these guys, trust me), and they're willing to make a long-term (read: at least 2 years) commitment (read: they sign an exclusive contract with you to perform website marketing/SEO/maintenance for at least 2 years) to bettering their website, then by all means take over website admin and get them a better search engine position. But demand complete and unfettered server access, the ability to change any code necessary (note that I said 'code', not 'content'), and demand that they start a program to continually create new content (and demand more money if they want you to do it for them).

Just be sure to keep track (and proof) of how much of an improvement you've made for them. This means locking down what search terms they want, and figuring out their current SE position for those terms (and getting that company to sign off that they know where they're starting at in the SE's before you begin any work), then keeping daily logs, weekly charts, and weekly page-captures of the SE results pages. Save everything for at least 5 years after you and this company no longer have a working relationship.

Sounds harsh, I know. Sounds like a lot of unnecessary work, I know. But in the event this DOES turn out to be a company like I think it is, you'll thank your lucky stars you kept track of everything.

[yulrika]

Hello to all webpro people…

I really need your help. I had submitted my site last year on google and got listed as well. But after a few months I could not find my site anywhere. Then I tried resubmitting and still have got not got a listing on google. Besides google my site is not listed on any many search engines. Where did I go wrong?

Also I have read in the forums that getting sites to link to you increases your ranking, so how do I get sites to link to me and what do I need to do.

Any help will be really appreciated. I have been trying to get listed for months now and I’m afraid bout the site being banned.
Thanx
cheers!
.
.
y

http://www.totalconceptsllc.com

[HillsCap]

First impressions:
1) Get rid of the ActiveX control on your home page... most people in the know about computer security have ActiveX either turned completely off, or at least set to prompt them that an ActiveX control wants to run... and very, very few legitimate sites require ActiveX.

2) Your TITLE tag:
<title> ::: Total Concepts - Event Management ::: </title>

Get rid of the :::'s, it's probably messing up Google. Remember, your TITLE tag helps to determine your site's categorization under Google.

3) Your BODY tag
<body bgcolor="#0A0A0A" text="#000000" link="#BCBCBC" alink="#FFFFFF" vlink="#BCBCBC" marginwidth="0" marginheight="7" topmargin="7" leftmargin="0">

Start using CSS completely, right now you have a mish-mash of older HTML tags and CSS.

4) Get away from a table-based layout, redesign the site to use DIV containers (it's really not difficult to change over, and so much easier to maintain and update).

5) Your META tags:
<meta name="keywords" content="Event Planning", "Current Events in Dubai", "Event Management in Dubai", "1st branding and positioning", "al ries", "jack trout", "events", "entertainment", "fun", "corporate events in the UAE", "concerts around UAE", "parties", "organising gulf events", "host", "talent brokerage", "models", "promotion girls", "forums", "symposium Dubai", "seminars", "conferences held", "executive education", "Total Concepts", "concepts development upto execution", "adventure", "outdoor enteratinment", "training", "United Arab Emirates", "event planners">
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="Party Planning, Corporate Events, Promotional Event entertainment, Theme Promotions, Trade Shows, Event Planners, children's entertainment, comedians, celebrity look-alikes, DJs, magicians, jugglers, clowns, fortune tellers, palm readers, caricaturists, photographers, Bright Entertainment">

It should look something like this (keep the tags in the order shown (TITLE, DESCRIPTION, KEYWORDS, ABSTRACT), it's been found that Google likes them best that way):
<title>Important Keyword or Description | Second Keyword | Third Keyword</title>
(Notice the PIPE (|) character used to separate items... that's been found to be the most compatible across all search engines)

<meta name="description" content="This should contain descriptive text about your site, and include the Important Keyword or Description, Second Keyword and Third Keyword">

<meta name="keywords" content="Important Keyword, Second Keyword, Third Keyword, etc.">
(Notice that there are no quotes (") around each keyword, as you currently have yours. Get rid of your <meta http-equiv="keywords"... tag).

<meta name="abstract" content="Important Keyword, Second Keyword, Third Keyword, etc., etc.">
(Note: this is used by some but not all search engines)

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
(Note: use whichever content-type you wish, UTF-8 is the best, in my opinion)

6) You need the following (or a similar tag) at the VERY beginning of your code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

It's called a DOCTYPE DECLARATION. Google that term to figure out the best one for you to use.

7) CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!
The only thing you've given Google to chew on is your META tags. You need more content to allow Google to properly determine where your site fits into its search rankings.

[HillsCap]

One last note:
I shouldn't have to tell you, but I will anyway:
Choose your keywords VERY VERY carefully. Do extensive research and figure out how much each search term is being searched for, and how many other websites are optimized for those search terms.

Try to find search terms that are heavily searched, yet have relatively fewer websites optimized for that particular search term.

Once you've found the proper keywords, use them in your TITLE, Description, and Keywords META tags, as well as in the page content.

This, above all, will determine how well you do in Google.

[minstrel]

4) Get away from a table-based layout, redesign the site to use DIV containers (it's really not difficult to change over, and so much easier to maintain and update).

Why do you say this, HillsCap? I've been wondering about DIV vs TABLE myself...

[carol]

HillsCap wrote:

Do extensive research and figure out how much each search term is being searched for, and how many other websites are optimized for those search terms.
This sounds like excellent advice! How would one go about actually doing that? If you go to Google and search on the term and 15,000 sites come up (or 1,500,000), do you figure they are all "optimized?" Or are you just looking for the bottom-line number?

Obviously you want to maximize your demand/supply ratio, but how do you calculate the metric?

Thanks,
carol

[HillsCap]

minstrel:
You want to use DIV based layouts because it allows you to use absolutely-positioned DIV's. Hence, the link between where that DIV is initialized in code, and where it shows up on the screen is now broken (this is a good thing).

The result? You can place your main content DIV code right up there under your <BODY... tag, meaning that the SE's see it first. And if you've got that content optimized, your keywords should be near the beginning of that content, preferably in an <H1> tag, as well as further down in the actual page content.

Carol:
If you do a search on Google for a specific search term, and 1,500,000 sites come up, that means that each of those sites has that specific search term somewhere in that page's content or META tags. It is optimized (although it may not be INTENTIONALLY optimized) for that keyword. These are the sites you want to beat. Obviously, the fewer there are to beat, the easier it is to get a high ranking.

Go to http://www.wordtracker.com/ or http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ to figure out which keywords you should be looking at.

The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool (OSTST) won't give you the number of GOOGLE searches, but it'll be close enough for our purposes.

For instance, when I do a search on Google for the search term "commodity broker", I have 337,000 results.

When I enter the term "commodity broker" into OSTST, I see that there have been 34871 searches done in September 2003.

So, 34871/337000 * 100 = 10.34747

So, the search term 'commodity broker' has a value of 10.35.

Now, do a search for each of your search terms, those with the highest values are the ones you keep... those with lower values you discard. Don't try to optimize the site for too many specific search terms, as you'll end up only getting mediocre search rankings for all the terms. Our site has only 5, and we've peaked at #19 out of over 2 million for one of our search terms (our best one), we're currently at #33, which I'm sure will get better as I begin adding more content. The really funny part? We now rank higher than our Clearing Firm, which is a company about 100 times bigger than us.

[kidino]

why isn't Google indexing my site?
Can you give us the URL?
The domain is kengkawan.net and the sub-domain that I have been trying to index is airsoft.kengkawan.net. I have tried submitting, linking from other sites that are already listed (which google did re-visited) ... nothing seems to work

[carol]

HillsCap, I am impressed. Thank you!
carol

[cbp]

airsoft.kengkawan.net. I have tried submitting, linking from other sites that are already listed (which google did re-visited) ... nothing seems to work

I can not find any links to this page that are from sites that are in the Google index. There may be some, but can no find...

Submitting does not make much (any?) difference .... I liken submnitting to Google a bit like pushing the close door button in an elevator .... you know it makes no difference, but you do it anyway and feel better for having done it.

CBP

[kidino]

4) Get away from a table-based layout, redesign the site to use DIV containers (it's really not difficult to change over, and so much easier to maintain and update).

Why do you say this, HillsCap? I've been wondering about DIV vs TABLE myself...
doing SEO and discovering CSS, I think DIV is better rather than TABLE because ...

DIV with external CSS uses less formating codes makes that web page smaller - more condense content rather than a bunch of codes
you can rearrange layout, putting content first in coding but design first in layout - like having the menu on the left side though coded at the end of the file

[minstrel]

Thanks, HillsCap and kidino:

I never thought of DIV as anything but a layout thing... never considered that there may be implications for spiders... interesting.

A day that I learn something new is a good day.

:-)

[chris_g]

minstrel wrote:
kidino wrote:
why isn't Google indexing my site?

Kidino:

Both your subdomain and main website are showing up in Google. Do you mean its not showing up for your search terms?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site%3Akengkawan%2Enet+kengkawan%2Enet

Mostly your subdomain has pages listed. When I look at your main site there is only one page that says:
"K E N G K A W A N . N E T
a p p e a r i n g i n y o u r b r o w s e r v e r y s o o n"

And has no links and no images. There is nothing more to index. One page websites never do very well but when they don't contain any content they tend to not show up at all.

Try placing some content on the website and Google will likely pick it up fairly quickly since your site is already in the Google index.

[rlrouse]

I really need your help. I had submitted my site last year on google and got listed as well. But after a few months I could not find my site anywhere. Then I tried resubmitting and still have got not got a listing on google. Besides google my site is not listed on any many search engines. Where did I go wrong?

Submitting a website to Google is much less effective than letting Googlebot find it on its own by crawling links from other sites to it.

Get a few high-quality links from pages that are already in Google and you'll be much better off. I never (and I do really mean never) submit a site to Google.

[kidino]

OK ... thank guys. My sub-domain is indexed now.