How Can I Tell If My Site is Banned or Penalized

First, let's start with some basic definitions. When a site is banned, it is completely removed from the search engine's index of webpages. Essentially, it no longer exists. When a site is penalized, it is still included in the index and may appear for some rare search terms, but it will generally not rank well for any of its targeted search terms or "keywords".

It can be difficult to detect penalties since those sorts of things just go into the mix of how search engine ranking methods operate and a site that ranks poorly may be penalized or may simply not rank well for other reasons. Given how often Google experiments with its ranking methods, it is not unusual for a site's rankings to fluctuate even if the webmaster has made no significant changes for quite some time.

But an absolute ban is pretty easy to detect:

• Check the "site:" command and see if Google says it has no information on a site
• Check the "link:" command and see if Google shows no links
• Search on the domain name in Google.

If the site: and link: operator searches show no results, then it's almost certain that you site has been banned. If your site doesn't appear at all or ranks poorly in the search for its domain name, but the site: operator shows some pages in the index, that's good evidence that the site has been penalized.

It is not unusual for new sites that are less than 3-6 months old, and/or with very few high quality links pointing to it, to fall out of Google's index for a short period. If your site falls into this category, don't simply wait for Google to rediscover it. Go through your site for possible violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and make any changes that you feel are appropriate. Then get to work building more links from other well-ranked websites whose main topic is related to yours. Links are a vital component of how your site performs in the search engines. A steadily growing foundation of quality links will see you through most difficulties and will, of course, always contribute to your site's rankings in all of the search engines.

You can do some searches on Google for other people's opinions on this topic, and easily come up with some additional advice, but this is my general approach. Absolute bans seem to me to be pretty rare, but its never happened to me because I take a pretty conservative approach to Search Engine Optimization.

Removing a Ban or Penalty

The basic formula for removing a ban or penalty is very simple to describe in theory, but it can be difficult to do in practice because the Guidelines are very broad. Still, it's not a hopeless task, although it can require some technical skills - especially a working knowledge of HTML, the language of webpages. If you don't know HTML - for example, if you rely on a program like Microsoft Front Page or Adobe's Dreamweaver to create your webpages, then you may need the help of a web designer or search engine optimization specialist to help you. But if you do know HTML, you should have no trouble repairing any problems once you've found them.

Most bans or penalties fall into a relatively narrow list of reasons. For Google, it means you have violated their Quality Guidelines, in particular:

1. Hidden text or links
2. Cloaking: Serving different content to search engines and normal users
3. Deceptive link schemes
4. Paid Links
5. Creating A Thin Affiliate Site

Hidden text is usually pretty simple to detect. It was a common trick of early search engine optimization to hide blocks of keyword-stuffed text from users by displaying them in the same color as the background. When done using simple HTML, the search engines have no difficulty in detecting this trick. The use of Cascading Stylesheets (ie. CSS) has made hidden text more difficult for the search engines to detect with their automated processes, but they can detect signs of it well enough to get a site flagged for a manual review by a search engine technician. You can check your webpages for accidental hidden text by loading the page in your browser and choosing the "Select All " option from the "Edit" menu. If you see text appear after using "Select All" that wasn't visible before, that's something you need to correct immediately.

Another way that text can be hidden is by using CSS to move the text off-screen or use the setting "display:hidden; ". This is another case where the search engines' automated systems won't find a violation immediately, but may get flagged for a manual review. The key factors in determining whether or not this is a violation or not are (a) is the text intended to be seen by users, and (b) is there an obvious way that users can select to see this text. If the answer to both questions is "Yes", then it is not a violation and you won't be penalized. If either answer is "No", then you need to correct it.

Cloaking is a more sophisticated way of trying to fool the search engines. It means that your site shows different content to the search engines than it does to users. That is, the search engine robot will see a highly-optimized page filled with little more than keyword-rich text, while users will see a more attractive or highly promotional page. Some webmasters try things along this line with less deceptive intentions, such as attempting to customize their content to the user's geographic location, but it is still technically cloaking. Since this requires overt action by the webmaster to impliment, there's little mysterious about it. The bottom line is don't do it. You will be found. The search engines have robots that don't use the same User-Agent identification as their primary crawlers, and they are difficult to detect. If they see discrepencies in what their regular crawler sees and their cloaking detection crawler sees, you'll soon be banned.

Defining exactly what constitutes a Linking Scheme is almost impossible, but you can define some obvious cases. If you're involved with a plan that requires you to link to several websites in exchange for getting links from a different set of websites, that's a deceptive linking scheme. If you're paying for links, that's a deceptive linking scheme. If you have an automated link exchange system on your website that allows links from virtually any site that agrees to trade links with you, then that's a deceptive linking scheme.

Google has always tolerated a certain level of link exchanges, so it can be hard for a new webmaster to decide where to draw the line. The basic principle I use is to make sure that the link partner site is a quality site that I would honestly recommend to my users, with a heavy bias toward sites that contain information that's relevant to my own site. It doesn't have to be a direct competitor, but it does need to have at least a tangetial relationship.

The Final Step: Once you've cleaned up all of the violations you've found on your site, you should file a Reconsideration Request through the Google Webmaster Tools console. Be sure to include details of the changes you've made as well as promising not to violate the Guidelines again in the future. It can take several weeks for a Reconsideration Request to be processed, and even longer for a penalty to be lifted, depending on the degree of the violation. Once you've filed the Request, you'll just have to wait for things to improve. So in the meantime, you need to keep adding fresh, original content to your site and keep building quality links from other well-ranked sites.