Banned by Google! Help

[Faevilangel]

A client has come to me to fix their site, they hired "a friend of a friend" to build a new site. The new site looks ok but behind the code in 520 links to porn sites.
His site was ranking #1 in google for 3 words, now he not in any, so I am guessing he has been banned.

How can I get his site back? I am taking the site offline now, but how can I undo what the tit has done?

I put the site to #1 and built the original site but no longer have a copy so will just throw up a holding page.

I am going to set up google webmasters to get an idea of what happened.

Anyone got any ideas?

[mattsaw]

Does the site come show at all under a site:domain.com query or a search for the site name?

If not then it's probably been banned.

1. Clean-up the code and remove the links
2. Signup to Google webmaster tools
3. Submit a reconsideration request, explain what happened and why, and the steps that have been take to ensure it won't happen again.

[Faevilangel]

It's not showing in site:domain... First thing I checked

Done that and verifying now

Where do I submit that?

[WeblinkPlus]

Hijacking mattsaw's response :-)

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration

[Faevilangel]

Hijacking mattsaw's response :-)

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration

Cheers, submitted.

The moral of this story? Cheap is not always better and be sure to know what the person is doing :eek:

[OldWelshGuy]

In fairness the person might not have known, he could have used a vulnerable script to build the website, or a deliberately infected piece of code from a code shop.

Make sure that the site is 100% clean as a whistle though befrfore filing the re-inclusion, otherwise it could kill the site dead forever.

[Faevilangel]

In fairness the person might not have known, he could have used a vulnerable script to build the website, or a deliberately infected piece of code from a code shop.

Make sure that the site is 100% clean as a whistle though befrfore filing the re-inclusion, otherwise it could kill the site dead forever.

Nah the guy knew what he was doing, I have seen another of his "work".

I have totally removed all the files, and uploaded a new holding page.

Just gotta wait for Google to allow him back, as Google was his only source of income.

[Kev Jaques]

Part of these issues can be the password generator algorithms hosts are using to reset users ftp, there are a few out there that have been hacked so always wise to change it if their algo has changed it in order to prevent further hacking. Unfortunately their policy re changing passwords is blanket based even though their algo has been hacked, they still deem it necessary to change (mind boggles ;) )

Also using strict doctype helps some of this from happening and results in an xml error so stops the page loading anyways. Due to most spam links like that not conforming to the strict doctype.

[MASSEY]

I always thought if the url was clearly a business website, you could black hat the hell out of it linkfarm it the **** out of it, and if it got caught get it "reconsidered" and it would 100% get replaced in the google index.

[bdw]

penalty windbacks
Sounds like a trapped f@rt!

[Furzefield Digital Ltd]

Sounds like a trapped f@rt!

Only more painful!

[mobyme]

Well thanks for your post and what a nice way with words.

I have been an SEO for 12 years, longer than many and so believe I know what I am talking about. I said that it is not always easy to achieve a windback because it depends on more than just offending links and code, quite often it can also be how a site has been structured and if it is a large site then a restructure is not easy. It is not impossible to achieve but it can take time to get the site compliant before asking for reconsideration.

I used those words because your post is exactly the kind of post that winds me up. You imply that you have some sort of specialist knowledge that enables you to get a site re-indexed when you don't. A poor site structure might put a site at a disadvantage when it comes to being crawled but it will not get you banned.
I have submitted more than twenty client sites; some with appalling site structures and poor coding for reconsideration. In every instance once the offending links and/or offending code has been removed they have been re-indexed.

Sure there is a protocol to follow, but it is not difficult. The following guide was put together by Randfish over at SEOmoz which others may find useful.

http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/google-penalty-flowchart.gif

[Furzefield Digital Ltd]

Sometimes best to agree to disagree.

[Ali-v-8]

Not if you don't have the knowledge on how to do it.

back to the original OP. Those links must have had some seriously bad content for google to remove you.
i have seen adult websites up load 1000's of links without google blinking.
There may be another issue


What a load of XXXXX, it's very easy; clean up the site and submit for reconsideration. If you are not a serial offender that is all there is to it.

[Faevilangel]

Not if you don't have the knowledge on how to do it.

back to the original OP. Those links must have had some seriously bad content for google to remove you.
i have seen adult websites up load 1000's of links without google blinking.
There may be another issue

I am starting to think so, he is not indexed by G anymore but the only thing I could find was the links. All the backlinks have been removed too, and the same for Bing. HMMMM

[OldWelshGuy]

I always thought if the url was clearly a business website, you could black hat the hell out of it linkfarm it the **** out of it, and if it got caught get it "reconsidered" and it would 100% get replaced in the google index.

Absolutely certainly not the case. If there has been onsite wrongdoing due to a hack etc, and your link footprint is 100% clean as a whistle, then it is fairly simple to get re-included.

If OTOH your onsite wrongdoing co-incides with a lot of link farmed crappy links, then it gets a lot harder, as the chances of you being innocent (as in resonable doubt of your innocence) is slight. And getting back in will be tough.

IF thirdly when you file re-inclusion, you have a spammy link footprint, and your site is anything but 100% non seo'd to the hilt, then you are unlikely to get back in, the same goes for a normal footprint. If your site is totally SEO'd if there are bad alt image attributes for example, all of that can hurt you and make Google decide that you are probably guilty.

Why do you think Black hatters throw domains away? If ti was as easy as just filing a RR there would be no need to accept domain name collateral damage as part of black hat SEO.

[Ali-v-8]

I still think this is too much guess work.
He may have had malware on his website that was not removed.
What we really need is to take a look at the website and then give you a conclusion.

[OldWelshGuy]

Ali I agree, but we are assuming that the pro dealing with it knows what they are doing.

It could be as simple as the host not being happy about bandwidth/datatransfer and blocking the spiders for example. I have seen that ahppen before now.

[Ali-v-8]

Still, too many factors not being seen.
Clean slating it may not help if the URL is banned.
I do recall one website i know being banned because of a link too a website containing bad images (children) the website and 4 others got wiped.
The owner of the website had no idea but had bought into a link exchange.

The problem is no matter what you do then if the URL has been flagged you may as well start afresh.



Ali I agree, but we are assuming that the pro dealing with it knows what they are doing.

It could be as simple as the host not being happy about bandwidth/datatransfer and blocking the spiders for example. I have seen that ahppen before now.

[Faevilangel]

Still, too many factors not being seen.
Clean slating it may not help if the URL is banned.
I do recall one website i know being banned because of a link too a website containing bad images (children) the website and 4 others got wiped.
The owner of the website had no idea but had bought into a link exchange.

The problem is no matter what you do then if the URL has been flagged you may as well start afresh.

I have done an RR and cleaned the website, so hopefully they will see we have done enough.
The owner did not buy any links from farms etc that I know of.

The site does as the name suggests, and wasn't dodgy in any way, just selling on product via the site.

He has another domain which he can use if Google has banned it pernamently

[Shipra00]

Start building quality one way links immediately...

[zabestof]

Just gotta wait for Google to allow him back, as Google was his only source of income.

Submit the website for re-inclusion and forget about it. I bought a new domain name a couple of years ago and Google wouldn't index it. I`ve made a little research and found out that the domain was registered in the past by someone else who apparently did some blackhat and the domain was banned by Google since.

So, I`ve made a re-inclusion request telling them that I`ve just registered the domain and blah, blah and waited.... And waited and waited...

I got it indexed, at last, after 7 months.

[Faevilangel]

Just an update, the domain wasn't banned, it just wasn't indexed in Google. When I built his original site 2 years ago I built it on the domain and got it to #1, but 7 months ago he registered a new domain and redirected the old domain to the new one.

The new one is the same as the old one with the hyphen, and he forgot to tell me he had changed it. His other domain hasn't been banned but he has lost all his rankings for Google (so got a penalty I am guessing?).

His new site will go up in 2/3 days and then I will have to start all over again...

Thanks for the input everyone

[Ali-v-8]

See, its not always doom and gloom.
Golden Rule 2, never believe the client always check yourself.

Just an update, the domain wasn't banned, it just wasn't indexed in Google. When I built his original site 2 years ago I built it on the domain and got it to #1, but 7 months ago he registered a new domain and redirected the old domain to the new one.

The new one is the same as the old one with the hyphen, and he forgot to tell me he had changed it. His other domain hasn't been banned but he has lost all his rankings for Google (so got a penalty I am guessing?).

His new site will go up in 2/3 days and then I will have to start all over again...

Thanks for the input everyone