Okay, now I know why my new site has been banned by Google. I'm almost sure of it now, and it's absolutely has to do with a duplicate content penalty, or maybe spam penalty. Here's what happened: 1) I had to switch domain names. 2) Meanwhile, another site had been hijacking my pages. (I'm convinced he didn't do it maliciously; but he probably didn't think there was anything wrong with it, either.) 3) With my site offline, the hijacker's pages (with my pages' title and content) entered Google's index as the hijacker. He leaves a re-direct in the page that sends the traffic to my site, but Google thinks it's HIS page that people are clicking on. 4) When I come back online with my second site, Google crawls me, and penalizes me for having DUPLICATE content -- because it's already spidered the hijacker's page, and thinks I'm copying from HIM. 5) I can't get in Google at all. I've been penalized. Here's what I've done to try to rectify this: 1) Emailed the webmaster and asked him to remove all my pages from his site. He's done so; very quickly, I might add, as in a few hours after I emailed him. 2) I've emailed Google to let them know what happened and to ask for re-inclusion. 3) And now, the hardest part -- waiting. Any thoughts on this, guys, and what I can do to hasten my return into Google?
Not based on facts but try and beat the hijacker in terms of links/PR. It seems like in these cases the highest PR 'wins'. It can only add more credibility to your site if you have more 'votes'.
Well that's a problem. Since I had to switch domains, my site is only 2 months old, and has a PR of 0. ANd since I've been banned, I'm never going to climb out of the hole, because Google acts as if I don't even exist. But as for links, I have this guy beat hands down. When I switched domains, I emailed and asked all my fellow webmasters who linked to me to change their links, which they did gladly. This guy's site is simply a database of links -- he has NO ORIGINAL CONTENT whatsoever.
Update: I've gotten the site to take down all listings to my site, but the problem is that they have almost all of my pages in their database. When I do a site:domain.com search for my name, they basically have thousands of my pages in their db!!! Okay, so they've deleted all the re-directs WITHIN those pages, but I think I need to get them to PHYSICALLY delete the pages where they have the re-directs, right?
Maybe HE can 301 to you (each page). That would be the clearest signal that YOU are the owner. Or he can do exclusion requests to get them out the database.
Hmm, would that work? Wouldn't Google still think he and I are in cahoots and we're just re-directing pages everywhere? I'm thinking that it might be worth it just to have him physically remove every single link he has to my page -- every re-direct pages on his database -- so that when Google crawls us both next time, they'll remove all mention of a connection between us, and my pages will be the only copy on the net. I'm thinking that that would be cleaner and more effecient. What do you think? Also, I don't know about getting him to do the exclusion request, because he has THOUSANDS of my pages in his database. Basically every single page I ever created, he has a copy of it all pointing to HIS site. And it's not just my site. He has farmed links from HUNDREDS of other sites.
I'm not sure how exclusion requests work, they might indeed per on a per page basis which would be a nightmare. If the URLs have a folder or variable in common, a htaccess invoked 301 shouldn't be too much hassle. 301's IMO is the best solution. Just deleting them leaves Google guessing and you could be waiting months before they;re out of the index. A 301 is more or less a command to Google to update the index.
I think 1 thing is your assuming there is a human involved.... alot of this is automated. If you have the guy 301 all urls to your new then google will think its fine because its automated system is setup like that. yes to a human it would look fishy but also to a human you wouldnt be in this situation
Okay, so I need him to do 301 re-directs to my pages. Since he has all my individual pages in his database, do I need him to do 301 re-directs to my invididual pages, or all to the homepage? Does that make sense?
just so I understand.... you dont own the domain but all the pages of content on that site you have on a new domain? do they follow any url structure of anykind like article2323.php or anything like that? if so you could right 1 rule for the .htaccess well you could right 1 rule anyway but it would redirect everything.
I just talked to him and I very much believe he didn't mean to do this on purpose. He seems like a good guy to me. Anyways, he said he would disallow Googlebot from now on, and this: "I didn't have any of your reviews/pages in my database, only the urls that go to these reviews . I have removed them from the database + all the other links that go to your site. So when google grawls through my site next time it doesn't find anything linking to your site." Thoughts?
like i said above if your urls follow any pattern it would be cake to redirect =P if you want pm me the urls and ill tell you in 2 secs how easy it would be along with htaccess code to give to your friend
Okay, guys, the other guy and I decided it would be a better idea to wipe the slate clean, so that when Google indexes us (they come to my site almost every day, because I have a lot of high quality links anyway) that they'll realize I have the only copy of content on the page, and unban me. Of course I'll keep bugging them with emails just to hasten the process up. Anyways, thanks to Tops and Shoemoney for helping a brother out. Peace.