Banned by Matt Cutts! But seriously, any advice?

[MarcGrobman]

Well I can’t believe it! Our website has been suddenly banned by Google. Any advice is welcome.

I believe the site was banned because we use a javascript refresh Flash detector. This detector page had content on it that came from our Flash website because, otherwise the search engines were not indexing the information in our website. And we had researched and found advice that that was a reasonable use of the landing page. (I’m sure there is a better way to do this now, but it was the best way to Flash detect back when we launched the site. And we’ve been ready to post a new, non-flash website for months. The new site has been delayed as client work has been prioritized. Any week now we’ll get it out there… )

Anyway, I’m blown away and quite humbled and would like to fix this as soon as possible. We try to hold ourselves to high standards and I am very wary of shady schemes in SEO. I have even avoided link exchanges and directories on our site because it always seemed a little grey hat. The point is, we try to stay very clean and were never trying to scam search engines, only trying to index Flash content. In retrospect I can sure see how it looked spammy and have pulled down all content from the top page in hopes that we can gain reinstatement.

I’ve learned so much from this community and have really appreciated all I’ve learned here. Any tips on how to get us out of this mess are welcome.

(Oh, one hilarious/paranoid note – I made a post on the Matt Cutts blog asking about how they deal with reports of website spam, by manual bans or through the algorithm. And as if Matt responded by flicking the switch, our site shuts off. Nice. I don't really think he did it but who knows. You get mighty paranoid in a situation like this.)

[MtraX]

Hi

There are more intelligent ways of detecting flash version. You can do it within flash, by created a container that checks version and loads the appropriate movie, without using reloading scripts etc. If the player version is lower than your spec, you could load a warning message with a link to download the latest version.

Check out http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/fp8_detection.html for more information.

Regards
MtraX

[MarcGrobman]

Thanks. I hadn't seen this latest Flash 8 detector info. I'm aware there are better ways to detect Flash now, and it sounds like this new method may even be google friendly. 5 years ago our current script was the best approach.

I've been hoping to avoid updating this site while we get the new non-flash site through production. Am I really going to have to retool this site to get out of the ban?

[MtraX]

Hi

Yeah, that redirect is a total no-no, especially with having some of your main keywords on it. Usually the flash detection page has no content. Anyway, rather get rid of it totally.

Another option might be to have a static page with some content and to have an enter button going to the flash site, allthough your site is going to have much better results (ranking) with being coded in HTML. Your index page could have an option of going to flash or html (I would just ditch the flash since it's double work, you can always have a 'flash portfolio' somewhere on the site to showcase your flash skills).

Make sure that you follow the webmaster guidelines posted by Google. Also remember to do a request for re-inclusion as specified by Matt after the new site is live.

MtraX

[MarcGrobman]

Yea, I really hate enter pages that make you click. The experience should be seemless.

Amd yes, we are ditching the flash. ASAP.

I don't want to gripe, I know I'm playing the google game here and you win some and lose some. But I thought we were playing it clean and safe. It goes to show you that you really have to second guess any advice even from the so-called experts.

Also frustrating is that we sure don't go out of our way to scam like our competitors with multiple doorway pages and many paragraphs of fake content.

Yea, I know the limitations of Flash. But it is a legitimate way to build a website. And if I put a blank detector up there, Google just reads "Flash Detector" or whatever for our home page. I know there are ways out of this. I'm just really shocked and frustrated! And I know I just need to learn from this and see what we are doing that looks deceptive.

I suppose it is my turn now. I've had such (mostly) great experiences with Google in the past.

[glengara]

Y! shows 3000+ links to your site, I suspect the reason for the G ban lies somewhere there rather than being Flash based...

[MarcGrobman]

Y! shows 3000+ links to your site, I suspect the reason for the G ban lies somewhere there rather than being Flash based...

Really? Is there a limit on links? We haven't engaged in any linking schemes. We do have credit links that appear on some of the websites we've built. Is that now considered link spam?

[glengara]

*Is there a limit on links?*

No, there's no limit on links, but it's slightly strange that you should have quite so many without having engaged in any linking schemes ;-)

*We do have credit links that appear on some of the websites we've built.*

That may well explain it, on the other hand 3000+ links may well be overdoing it ...

[aaron2005]

File for reinclusion

[greeneagle]

IMO - There is a serious limit on irrelevant links now... They just don't count much for anything any more... and it really doesn't matter if they are paid, sitewide, spammed and even hidden...relevant is relevant, OBLs and IBLs!

Ken

[MarcGrobman]

IMO - There is a serious limit on irrelevant links now... They just don't count much for anything any more... and it really doesn't matter if they are paid, sitewide, spammed and even hidden...relevant is relevant, OBLs and IBLs!

Ken

Yes. I've long doubted that it helps us much to have links in the footer of many pages throughout a site. It is a practice that started many years ago, before Google and before links mattered. I even wonder if it has become a penalty now. Perhaps we should address this. (I don't think that's why we were banned, I just wonder about the seo value.) A single link on a 'credits' page might even be better from an SEO perspective. Whenever I've used that PR predictor tool/toy it says we should be PR 9! Ha.

Again, we've never tried to manipulate SERPs with this, but we sure felt lucky when Google came along and started ranking us based in IBLs. We started getting beaten down by other web designer sites when they started engaging in linking schemes and link trading. But they always seem to get shaken out eventually....

[aaron2005]

Look at my home and garden site, it was built on a blog template so all links appear on all pages, should I be punished for an organized navbar?

www.home2garden.org

F-that! ;-(

[MarcGrobman]

File for reinclusion

I have. I just want to make sure I actually fix whatever is wrong first! And if anyone has a tip on how to best grovel to them.

I found this and guess it is the best advice out there
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/

Especially since I think MC was the one who busted us in the first place!

[MarcGrobman]

So i got rid of the javascript refresh Flash detector completely. We are so swamped I don't know when our new non-flash site will be ready!

I just saw the discussion about penalized vs banned and it appears our site might just be penalized. Does that make any difference? Do I still need to wait and see if they decide to accept my reinclusion request? Will it really be months before we hear anything?

[MtraX]

Hi

It couldn't hurt, but a start would be to do a basic KISS design and just get it up there to be crawled with some proper content. You might just set up a Google Sitemap after that for quicker crawling and indexing of the new pages.

Don't skimp on content though, put some solid content up regarding your service offering etc, so that Google knows what your site's about right away.

MtraX