Question:

My webmaster created my website in 2001 and used many techniques to achieve top 10 listings in search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo and Google. My site was banned by Google recently. I am not sure for what reason, but what must I do next to get back into Google ?

Peter D'lomen

Answer:

Hi Peter,

If getting banned from Google has got you worried then we sure know the reasons for it. Google is currently the undisputed numero uno search engine on the Internet. Getting banned would mean having committed the gravest of all sins by going against Google's own terms of acceptance. There is no doubt that many of the policies that Google outlines and most of the terms they adhere to for accepting or rejecting websites are contentious and debatable. But this thin line that they have to tread on themselves, is one of the reasons that they are the king of search engine relevancy.

Going from what is mentioned in your email, I would advise you to get back to your webmaster and ask him to disclose to you all the techniques and strategies he used to get top listings in the search engine results page. If you have already read Google's guidelines on quality you may be able to arrive at a conclusion as to whether your webmaster used any hidden text, cloaking techniques or doorway pages that was not acceptable to Google.

To directly read what Google has to say about webpages that were previously listed and are not listed anymore visit the following page:

"My web pages used to be listed and now they aren't."

Do you see something that strikes you ? Perhaps your website was not reachable when Googlebot (Google's software robot that seeks and indexes websites) tried to access it. This could be a temporary fault or glitch at your web hosting servers. If this is the reason, then your site should return to Google pretty soon.

However, if this is not the reason, the best way to get your website back into Google if it was banned is to write to help@google.com explaining your situation. If techniques such as cloaking or writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines, etc., were used, then you must clean your website of all such code and pages before writing to Google, to stand a good chance of possible re- inclusion.

If you do not get a reply from Google within 2 weeks you may politely send them a second email reminding them about your case. Wait another week or two and if yet no reply comes forth try a third and final email to them at the same address. You should get a reply giving you further information and status of the website in question and if all goes well you could be re- included in the next update. However, if three emails to Google still does not get you a response let alone re-inclusion then you should call up Google at 1-650-330-0100 to speak to them in person. When the menu is read out to you over the phone, press 0 to talk to a live operator who will tell you what to do in order to contact someone at Google. This should do the trick. Note, however, it is not advisable to first call them up before sending them an email, as email is the first medium of communication they prefer to use in discussing issues such as these.