mark754 Posted June 29, 2004 Posted June 29, 2004 I launched a site several weeks ago and, despite being crawled by Google, the site was never indexed. I waited patiently and built up links with other sites, thinking that Google just takes a while to get around to it. I also discovered that one of the sites I requested a link with had apparently set up a url which was redirecting to my site, rather than using a hyperlink. Since this might be interpreted as a cloaking attempt on my part, I got the link removed. --------------- I finally wrote to google about this and here is the reply I received: Thank you for your note. Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank. We cannot comment on the individual reasons your page was removed. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. Please read our webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html for more information. Regards, The Google Team --------------------------- The only other things that I can think of are: When I first launched the site, I was using too many keyword in the meta tags and in the image alt tags. These have since been revised. I have a few pages on the server that are not linked from within the site. These pages contain semi-confidential info. and when I want someone to access these files, I send them the url of these pages. Perhaps this is in violation of Google's guide which says that "every page should be accessible from at least one text link". I am using the osc "All Prods" contribution. However, I have the all prods link clearly displayed at the bottom of my home page. It's not hidden or disguised in any way). So, basically, the site is now free of anything questionable, as far as I know. Does anyone know what else might be causing google to block my site? Once a site is blocked, is it typically easy to get it unblocked, or is forever "tainted" and I should now just get a new domain name and server?
needleme Posted June 29, 2004 Posted June 29, 2004 Don't know if this will help or not, put if you put an table with that has a colored background and the letters you use are the same color as your overall background of you entire page, that can be construed as "hiding text". Any letters you use on your site CAN NOT be the same color as your overall background. Sounds silly :huh: , but thought I might mention it just in case!
vasttech Posted June 29, 2004 Posted June 29, 2004 Typically once you have been blocked it will take a long while before you will get allowed back in. The search engines are all very strict on this now to prevent some bogus sites from falling into search results. Google is extremely strict on it. The only thing you can do is work on getting your site listed on other search engines. Search the web for search engine optimization tips. Do not try to over do it though, as you have learned, you will get punished. osCommerce Knowledge Base osCommerce Documentation Contributions
mark754 Posted June 29, 2004 Author Posted June 29, 2004 I just got this reply from Google. Looks like another long wait..ugh! . Anyway, I want to make absolutely certain that there's nothing still on the site that might cause this problem again. Is there a thread or guide somewhere that lists all the "no no's", even if they're somewhat borderline? --------------- Thank you for your reply. We appreciate your efforts to comply with Google's quality standards. We have sent your request on to our engineering team who will review your site to determine if it is eligible for re-inclusion. If the website is reinstated, it will appear in Google's search results sometime in the next few months. We appreciate your patience during this process.
808smokey Posted June 29, 2004 Posted June 29, 2004 what did you do to get banned one "cloak" from another site won't do that. Will it?
damo2576 Posted June 29, 2004 Posted June 29, 2004 Don't know if this will help or not, put if you put an table with that has a colored background and the letters you use are the same color as your overall background of you entire page, that can be construed as "hiding text". Any letters you use on your site CAN NOT be the same color as your overall background. Sounds silly :huh: , but thought I might mention it just in case! This is interesting. So a standard install of OSC where the background is white and the text in the boxes is white (on coloured backgroud) could cause problems? Or have I misunderstood? Also, should you removed all pages thats aren't used? Damo
Inove Posted June 30, 2004 Posted June 30, 2004 Ok, sorry... stupid noob question...; What's cloaking? Sorry. Still learning. :blink:
agiftcodotcom Posted June 30, 2004 Posted June 30, 2004 Damo - White text on a blue box on a white bg is ok. White text in a white box on a white bg is not ok. You could 'conceal' search words this way. Your guests wouldn't see these words, but the bots would. As long as the text can be seen with the naked eye (maybe glasses or contacts), you're good to go. Inove - Cloaking is typically when several domains point to the same location and then use the alternative URL. Example: you go to yoursite.com, yoursitehere.com, yoursitethere.com, yoursiteeverywhere.com; all of these take you to asite.com, but in the title bar you still see each of the address. Some people try this so that search engines will index each of the addresses when they are all pointing to the same site. Or, each of the addresses are all re-directed to the other domain. You should typically have one maybe two names pointing to your site and that's it. You can have billions of links out there, but only one or two URL's. Hope that makes sense. Contributions I used : Updated 06-13-04 23:42 ---------------- Vote on My Graphis Poll
mark754 Posted July 1, 2004 Author Posted July 1, 2004 I would think twice about having *any* redirects. I had two domain names point to my site and think this is what got me banned.
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