How to Avoid Getting Banned by the World's Most Important Search Engine
The how's and why's of getting banned from the world's most important search engine.
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Picture this: You're a successful entrepreneur running a bustling online business. You've paid your dues, put in a lot of long hours, and your hard work is finally producing profitable returns. You have a steady stream of nicely converting traffic, excellent cash flow, and the power to be your own boss. Life is good.
One day you turn on your computer and because, like most of us, you're obsessive about checking your search engine rank you do a quick search and poof! ...your site, which was ranking #1 on Google's results just the day before, is now suddenly nowhere to be found.
You check your logs and find that traffic is tanking at an alarming rate. Online sales have slowed to a trickle. Suddenly, life ain't so good anymore.
Like most online entrepreneurs, your website is your livelihood — and getting kicked out of Google may be one of the most terrifying business setbacks imaginable. You need to know why it happened. You need to know the quickest way to get back in. Perhaps most importantly, you need to know how to keep it from happening again.
With that in mind, we present to you the complete guide to *not* getting banned from Google.
How do I tell if my site has really been banned from Google?
First, let's point out that having a site banned from Google is a fairly rare event, reserved for particularly egregious behavior. Usually, most objectionable offenses result in a reduced search engine rank; not an outright ban. Your page may still be in Google's index, it's just no longer residing in the upper echelon of the search results.
At one time, the Google toolbar was a fairly easy and effective way to find out if you had been banned from Google: A completely gray PageRank toolbar meant that Google did not have that page listed in their index—either because the page was too new to have been indexed, or the page had ...
