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How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

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Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#111
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, well I am willing to give that a try. Just implemented. Thanks Matt! http://filleritem.com/robots.txt

Cool, I'll send in a reconsideration request. You might want to add http://filleritem.com/iframe.html?q= as a pattern too.

Rather than "banning" an entire site that seems to have some spammy pages, why not index only the home page, and flag it in the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard?

Also: are any specific notices or warnings given in Google Webmaster Tools, to inform the webmaster and give some clues about the findings and decisions of your team?

Thanks Matt for taking time to explain things here.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#112

lol, poor Matt, always under fire from everybody who hasn't got the rankings they want. It's simple really, Google try to make it fair for everybody (and granted it doesn't always work perfectly, which is why the continue to make changes, it's evolution) and if some sites give themselves an unfair advantage and are caught, then they're punished. How else could a search engine work? If it were any different then al of…

lol, poor Matt, always under fire from everybody who hasn't got the rankings they want.

This isn't about desired ranking. If your highly useful, popular site gets blacklisted from appearing on Google at all, there better be a damned good reason.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, I'll send in a reconsideration request. You might want to add http://filleritem.com/iframe.html?q= as a pattern too.

Rather than "banning" an entire site that seems to have some spammy pages, why not index only the home page, and flag it in the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard? Also: are any specific notices or warnings given in Google Webmaster Tools, to inform the webmaster and give some clues about the findings and decisions of your team? Thanks Matt for taking time to explain things here.

Google needs to be more open and helpful for small businesses. A local small business with a new website has huge challenges to overcome.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#114
To Matt Cutts and the search quality team: Why does sites like this rank for every possible term with autogenerated results (such as filleritem.com)?

Nettkatalogen.no in Google.no ranks for about every possible term.

http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=h%C3%A5ndverker+oslo http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=snekker+trondheim http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=r%C3%B8rlegger+troms...

(They use the "powered by Google logo". They use very aggressive phone sales tactics and scam people. They buy links from newspapers.)

Is www.nettkatalogen.no violating Google Quality Guidelines? Or is this okay?

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, Would it be possible/financially practically for Google to offer a premium support option that would pay for itself? Figure out how much it costs to respond to someone, offer that as a flat fee with a clear indication, that paying only gets you a consult on what's wrong with your site, and not any promise that it will get you reinstated. Basically what you did in your comments above. I would personally make it…

It would be possible. I think Google has a bit of a historical aversion to it because it reminds us of pay-for-inclusion, in which someone would pay for their web page to be crawled/indexed. Larry Page was especially critical of pay-for-inclusion because it skews your incentives: if you don't crawl the web well, then people pay you to fix your own shortcomings, which in turn encourages you to have more shortcomings.…

>Larry Page was especially critical of pay-for-inclusion because it skews your incentives: if you don't crawl the web well, then people pay you to fix your own shortcomings, which in turn encourages you to have more shortcomings.

It would be fine provided you explicitly didn't turn it into a profit center, and just made it pay for the people's time.

Torching people's websites and shrouding the reasons why in mystery skews webmasters' incentives - away from creating high quality content and towards figuring out how to circumvent the latest change to the search algo.

>I wouldn't be philosophically opposed to a pay-for-support system if it were done well, but it would be a tricky thing to get right. Normally when we consider it, we end up saying things like "Why don't we just try to make it so that people don't need that option?"

I'm sure you could do that tomorrow if you wanted, but explaining in perfect detail exactly why somebody's (legitimate) website got torched would open the details of your algorithm right up, which would not only open it up to gaming, but would open it up to being copied.

You really could use a team of humans who can explain in human terms (as opposed to algorithmic) exactly why webmasters' sites got torched for violating the spirit of your "high quality content rule". Those same humans could equally feed back data to the search team where in their opinion an algorithm accidentally torched something it probably shouldn't have.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, Would it be possible/financially practically for Google to offer a premium support option that would pay for itself? Figure out how much it costs to respond to someone, offer that as a flat fee with a clear indication, that paying only gets you a consult on what's wrong with your site, and not any promise that it will get you reinstated. Basically what you did in your comments above. I would personally make it…

It would be possible. I think Google has a bit of a historical aversion to it because it reminds us of pay-for-inclusion, in which someone would pay for their web page to be crawled/indexed. Larry Page was especially critical of pay-for-inclusion because it skews your incentives: if you don't crawl the web well, then people pay you to fix your own shortcomings, which in turn encourages you to have more shortcomings.…

> I wouldn't be philosophically opposed to a pay-for-support system if it were done well, but it would be a tricky thing to get right. Normally when we consider it, we end up saying things like "Why don't we just try to make it so that people don't need that option?"

This is going on the wall here at the office. Thank you.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#117
post #25

Yea that sucks, it's happened to me MANY times. The fact of the matter is, it's Googles world and we're just living in it...

I don't think that it is as simple as that. There is some form of ecosystem on the web: there are the content creators and website providers, there are the searchers, and there are the search engine providers. Each of these has its own interests and guidelines. Searchers have quality guidelines too, though they are not explicitly published by them on the web. If a search engine delivers low-quality results, the searc…

All that means is your not trying hard enough :-)

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#118
post #25

Yea that sucks, it's happened to me MANY times. The fact of the matter is, it's Googles world and we're just living in it...

I don't think that it is as simple as that. There is some form of ecosystem on the web: there are the content creators and website providers, there are the searchers, and there are the search engine providers. Each of these has its own interests and guidelines. Searchers have quality guidelines too, though they are not explicitly published by them on the web. If a search engine delivers low-quality results, the searc…

> If this has happend to you many times, you are likely doing something wrong. I have never had one of my sites banned from Google.

Right. So. YOU'VE never personally had a site banned, therefore others who have must be doing it wrong.

You know what, I've never been hit by a car while crossing the street, therefore others who have must be crossing the street wrong.

I've never been in a plane crash, therefore others who have must be doing it wrong.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#119
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, when used as intended (with the query a dollar amount, like your 31.69 example), isn't his site useful ? (I've not noticed a similarly straightforward tool for this same purpose at Amazon.com itself.) The non-dollar-amount queries seem like a bug -- triggering a default of listing up from 0.00, unrelated to the query. If this were an intentional manipulative tactic, wouldn't the outlinks be related to the quer…

I'm not saying that the issues aren't fixable. But when the site came up for a review, we saw things that violate our quality guidelines: autogenerated pages with hundreds of affiliate links that consist of lots of keywords, and the links/keywords are duplicate content. If he fixes the issues by e.g. blocking out the autogenerated pages, then I expect his homepage will be found in Google. The autogenerated pages are…

Cut your 3rd chin off ya fat cock smoker.

Re: How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

#120
post #46
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, deleting an AdWords account won't remove the violation; it may actually make it worse. Google will look back several years and disable ads that haven't run for a very long time. Sometimes they even ban accounts that are inactive or deleted! It is very important to remember: when dealing with Google AdWords, the definition of a violation changes with time. If you violated the current policies in the pas…

That said, seeing an exclusion from organic based on an AdWords suspension is extremely alarming. That may be exactly what the DoJ is looking for in terms of violations by Google. According to Matt Cutts, it was the exact opposite: he got the organic suspension then the AdWords suspension.

I saw, much less alarming now.
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