Google and Penalized Domains

[Domainkeeper]

Hey,

just wanted to how does google measure spam ?

my site has been penalized since before i bought it from a domain reseller and they just wont relist it.

im extremly annoyed with google currently.

in the emails i recieved from googles subject line : (SPAM: 7.087) (SPAM: 6.088) (SPAM: 5.199) i wanted to know how they measure this.

 

[suthra]

Maybe the previous owner used cloaking techniques, link farming and other illegal methods and google might have banned it. THe domain owner might have sold that domain to you. He might have used the links that were still there in those link farms to satisfy you by saying they have link popularity.

Too bad

 

[McDope]

I have never had any similar problems but I've read in other forums that provided that you could include valid proof there was a good chance that the penalty would be lifted. It's hard to say whithout knowing what sort of penalty was applied (if the domain was blacklisted either as a result of the algo triggering the alarms or as a manual ban). In all cases I read about the result was always positive since the webmasters could prove that the whois records were updated and the domain was no longer used for spamming purposes. On the other hand, Yahoo is believed to be way more drastic in such decisions.

I'm curious about that Google mail, never saw anything similar.

 

[Domainkeeper]

well, as far as i know i bought the domain from a reseller. i have a very long email from google because i've been after them for so long...the only thing i dont understand is the rating has gone up ? i run forums on there and i did recently email all of them. about 250 also using vb. but im thinking now that should be my last even though it was actually the first mail out untill we get listed.

you have to rememeber that google is by far the biggest search engine, and its making my life a lot hard to promote my website, since some how they all seem to use the same banning list ! yahoo, msn are have blocked it.

 

[McDope]

I'm afraid you're mixing two concepts. Google has not penalized the domain because you've decided to mass mail (or spam) your users. More than likely, the former owner used it to create some sort of link farm that was detected by their algo and was thus penalized. Quite a few other options might fit in the same definition of spam, as far as Google is concerned. And it must have been a real big one if all the other search engines catched up as well, since they do not share their blacklist databases (Google would be really happy if MSN's index was full of spammy places, and viceversa).

 

[Domainkeeper]

No i did not spam my members i take offence to that, i'd rather mass mail, spam contains adverts misleading infomation or what have you, where as mine is relevant information about the site. yup i understand it wasnt my fault it was the previous owners mistake.

but relise that it was an adult site at that time, this is what google is not taking into account because the content now is for teenagers and does follow all guidelines.

 

[McDope]

I did not pretend to offend but I wanted to point out that in this case spam is not understood the usual way. Spamming a seach engine is usually understood as flooding it with countless different pages with no content other than crap links and stuff alike.

Review your site, write some good content, make sure there are no backlinks nor outgoing links to weird places, write some good content (!) and finally request a revision. If all goes wrong or if it supposes a big inconvenience, it may be a cheaper alternative to get rid of the domain and start all over from scratch in a new one.

Good luck! %%-

 

[Domainkeeper]

i thought of getting rid of the domain, but its not really what i want to do, its a very decent domain got a lot of potential in its field so i doubt i'd scrap this. the point is that i already contacted help at google and this is what they said:

Hi Ashley,

Thank you for your reply. We understand your concern
and have passed your message on to our engineering team for further
investigation.

We appreciate your patience.

Regards,
The Google Team

its actually listed in the dmoz and google directory. but has no page rank.

 

[McDope]

I guess that's as much as you can do. Don't sit on your hands while you wait and make sure that if/when they come to check your site it will (as you already said) fulfill the guidelines.

A DMOZ link will probably help, as long as it's in the correct category. As you said it used to be a pr0n site so having a backlink in the Adult category can result counterproductive. I'd try to get in touch with one of the editors there and request a change of category. It's really hard to get in touch directly so you could try posting at their board explaining your problem.

ODP forum ->http://www.resource-zone.com/

If you wish to PM the domain I can look further here and there and see whether there may be something else sneaky.

Other than that.... good luck!

 

[Domainkeeper]

haha, sorry might of misleaded you there, i didnt know dmoz actually had an adult section but this is where its at

ok the domain is teenville.com

listed:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Kids_and_Teens/Computers/Chats_and_Forums/Teens/
haha no guesses on which one ! :P
http://dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/Computers/Chats_and_Forums/Teens/

the relevant categories.

 

[McDope]

Well, just a few quick comments. The site has indeed been penalized (PR0 in the toolbar yet internal PR3, no backlinks shown and a weird PR0 bar at Google's directory) but I believe you've got all the pieces together to have the ban lifted, IMHO.

Some things that might work for you are the DMOZ category and the ICRA rating correctly placed at the meta tag, that's a really nice touch. Needless to say the content is great and it fits the guidelines. And you were right, the domain is great, I would not get rid of it, either.

The site was indeed a pr0n place, and while that certainly does not entitle it to be banned, if you check at the WayBack machine you'll see that in the updates round year 2002, there's some spammy stuff that might have triggered the automatic ban.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.teenville.com

Again, don't sit on your hands right now, it's going to be much harder with the penalty and all, but try to get some more quality backlinks. That way, when the ban is lifted you'll have all things in place. By all means, keep on developing it and adding backinks.

P.S. In case you don't get a formal reply, try mailing googlebot(at)google.com rather than webmaster(at)google.com. Rumor has it that these issues are dealt with faster at this address.

 

[Dave_Z]

Not sure if I have my info right, but I read in one of my fave online marketing
newsletters that once penalized, there's a fat chance of getting it removed.

The author went on to say that as far as he knows, the only possible way is
to...gulp...let the domain name expire, delete, and become available again.

Anyway, good luck on getting your dilemma resolved. But do have a backup
handy.

 

[AdsenseGuy]

Spam emails Keyword Spam Page Spam

 

[identity_00]

I dont see a penalty here. I see a domain with a PR0 (not grayed out) with no inbound links by Google and very few at other SE. The site has no content with a forum which doesnt get indexed anyway without a modification. The archive can get indexed - but has no links pointing to it which would result in a PR0 in most cases.

I do see the teenhub.co.uk (PR5) but its a redirect.

 

[McDope]

I don't think so, Yahoo lists some backlinks and just the DMOZ one (from a PR6 page) and Google Dir one (from a PR7 page) should have kicked its PR to some noticeable value.

Also, a gray bar means that the site has not been crawled/index while a PR0 means either a penalty or that the site was indexed but the Toolbar PR was not updated. As far as Googlebot not being able to index such a forum, it learned to crawl and index dynamic pages like that one quite a long time ago (NamePros uses the same forum script and it's definitely being indexed by Googlebot and other crawlers).

Funny thing is, this morning I checked that site on a linkpop tool and it showed a PR3. I checked again right now and it shows a PR0.

 

[identity_00]

Did they finally fix the forum indexing without the mod-write or archive? You could be right there.

Still his forum has no links.. Yahoo has only one link please post any other links you see and its a redirect.

Dmoz link doesnt go to teenville.com.

 

[McDope]

Googlebot will follow this type of dynamic links without need for mod_rewrite *as long as* no session ids are involved. It's not so clear that PR will be transfered, however, but VB threads will be indexed correctly. Likewise the more PR the home site has, the deeper it will crawl inside the forum structure.

As for Yahoo's backlinks, use the linkdomain: command rather than link: it's more extensive

i.e. linkdomain:www.teenville.com

Regardless of whether DMOZ directory links to the homesite or to a subdirectory, it's clear that the target page (in this case http://www.teenville.com/boards/) would have at least a PR2-3, which it obviously does not.

I smell a penalty

 

[Anthony]

i thought of getting rid of the domain, but its not really what i want to do, its a very decent domain got a lot of potential in its field so i doubt i'd scrap this. the point is that i already contacted help at google and this is what they said:



its actually listed in the dmoz and google directory. but has no page rank.

Well, on the bright side, there are other search engines...

 

[1rrr1]

not as good as google....lol

 

[Domainkeeper]

very interesting views, if your curious on why there is redirects i'll explain.

firstly the site used to be teenville.com/boards/ as i thought i wasnt going to add the rest of the site which was at the time teenhubs (which is now a redirect funny when i checked it was PR 6) although i'd never get round to actually finishing the site, me and the members said it would be worth just making teenville forum based i didnt want to do it but it was better for me and with the hacks avaliable with the software it was worth the change, and since google said it wasnt good to cloak pages such as redirects i changed it from boards/ to just teenville.com i've submitted updates dmoz so hopefully it will get updated, to just teenville.com, what caught me by surprise is that i didnt actually originally submit it to dmoz which is rare. and to get a description that gave it justice made me happy :D - this redirect change was really recent like a week also, so doubt this would cause a big effect on anything.

i think most traffic comes from google, so i think out of all i need to be listed on google, and hopefully all of them will follow.. i hardly ever get traffic from google or any small search engines

- Google 18 18 - most likely from the directory.
- DMOZ 7 7
- MSN 3 3 - god only knows.
- Unknown search engines 1 1

i checked the archive thats how i knew it was an adult site before hand.

all the emails i send to google was help(at)google.com but i'll try googlebot(at)google.com soon. any idea what i should say ?

i think its easy for them to block me so whys it so hard to add me back ?

how do you get listed on yahoo's directory ? does it add all links that are in the dmoz ?

my bottom line is that i dont anything at all wrong i have quite a few websites at the go with no trouble so this is really annoying and very costly as i've spend hundreds of pounds on this and not to get listed on search engines is really upsetting.

 

[McDope]

I'd simply explain your concerns, that you've reasons to believe that there's a penalty in effect to this particular domain. Tell them that you purchased the domain from another person, and encourage them to check the whois records.

Above all, emphasize that the site complies with the guidelines, and it has been positively reviewed by a DMOZ editor (no relationship, but it may help).

i think its easy for them to block me so whys it so hard to add me back ?

Google relies upon their algo to catch up spammy pages. They've got a form where people can report spam but I don't think they make good use of it. Above all, they need to rely upon their software to deal with this stuff automatically. Think of it, their index contains +4 billion pages... there's no way humans can take care of these issues. Once their software detects the offending site, it gets automatically banned. On the other hand it takes human resources to lift it, so be patient.

how do you get listed on yahoo's directory ? does it add all links that are in the dmoz ?

Yahoo and DMOZ are two entirely separated directories. You can submit your site to Yahoo in two different ways.

- For free. You can always try doing it this way (if your site is non commercial) but they do not guarantee inclusion. I never had any of my sites included this way.

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

- If you pay an upfront fee of $299 (!) that entitles you to have an editor that will review your site. If they decide it's up for inclusion, they'll do so and you'll have to pay $299 every year (Now you know why the free inclusion rarely works). Please note that they can determine that your site is not worth it and they will not refund your fee (!!)

https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/intro/

P.S. Just a suggestion, but if you can try to get as many incoming links as possible to your home page rather than to a subdirectory. Furthermore, there is some evidence that both Google and Yahoo are having problems indexing and transfering PR (in the case of Google) through 301 and 302 redirects.

Good luck.

 

[identity_00]

Or you can just add links to it and it will index all by itself.

I would recommend that you never pay unless you seriously need it done quickly and your willing to pay the costs.

McDope and I are taking different stands on this domain (and that is fine). I think you need to just fix your site and adds more links. He thinks your penalized or possibly banned.

 

[McDope]

Of course we're all just giving suggestions based on the information we have. For instance, we've not seen the logs so we could not confirm whether googlebot is visiting the site or not. I can't be dead sure that the penalty exists yet for what I can see I'm inclined to believe so. On the other hand I completely agree with your suggestions identity_00, adding quality backlinks will always help.

As for Yahoo, domainkeeper asked about inclusion in the directory, not in the index. They are two different things. Getting crawled by Yahoo's Slurp will get your site into the index and therefore in the search results, but getting the site in your directory is a completely different thing. And I agree, I'm strongly against Yahoo's policies (and fees!) for inclusion. I wouldn't even try if I was not real sure of the return on such investment. And in my experience, the free submission option in Yahoo's directory simply does not lead you anywhere.

Cheers

 

[Domainkeeper]

yeh, my jaw dropped when saw the inclusion price for yahoo's directory personally i think its really stupid.

but as you requested here are the logs:

Robots/Spiders visitors (Top 25) - Full list - Last visit
9 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot (Google) 403 5.66 MB 29 Sep 2004 - 10:50
Inktomi Slurp 15 94.72 KB 29 Sep 2004 - 20:51
Unknown robot (identified by 'robot') 7 218.67 KB 23 Sep 2004 - 00:19
Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl') 7 251.25 KB 30 Sep 2004 - 19:16
Unknown robot (identified by 'spider') 6 302.41 KB 29 Sep 2004 - 19:26
Alexa (IA Archiver) 5 89.75 KB 29 Sep 2004 - 05:12
LinkWalker 4 154.37 KB 20 Sep 2004 - 09:17
WISENutbot (Looksmart) 3 21.71 KB 18 Sep 2004 - 01:30
Walhello appie 1 3.19 KB 11 Sep 2004 - 08:26
* Robots shown here gave hits or traffic "not viewed" by visitors, so they are not included in other charts.

this is last months logs, looks as though google is spidering, but keep in mind that i run google ads, which is funnly enough has been approved. but on the other hand i dont really know. the ads appear on showthread pages and some others.

i will email google tonight, good point about the whois record can they actually check for that or for more of a better word, have access to it, whois.sc is the only one i know, you know its funny they actually rank me in their directory teenville pr 7 http://www.whois.sc/teenville.com

thanks for all your expertise, its helping me loads !! :D

 

[Domainkeeper]

sorry i didnt mention it before ...