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How do you know that your site has been 'banned' by a search engine?

Discussion in 'Websites' started by Michel Z., Apr 11, 2006.

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  1. #1
    What can I do to find out if my site has been banned/penalized or not by a search engine?
    Thanks a lot!
     
    Michel Z., Apr 11, 2006 IP
  2. max pain

    max pain Notable Member

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    #2
    Do what Minstrel has suggested below.
     
    max pain, Apr 11, 2006 IP
  3. BNix

    BNix Peon

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    #3
    Download Google Toolbars
    Browse to your site
    If not banned , your PR is 0-10 , If banned "No Pagerank Information Availible"
     
    BNix, Apr 11, 2006 IP
  4. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #4
    None of the above.

    Try site:yoursite.com as a query. If you get any pages listed, you're not banned.
     
    minstrel, Apr 11, 2006 IP
  5. max pain

    max pain Notable Member

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    #5
    but didnt he mean Sandboxed actually?
     
    max pain, Apr 11, 2006 IP
  6. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #6
    That's not what the post said.

    That www.whois.sc "blacklisted" thing is weird, erratic, and unhelpful, by the way.
     
    minstrel, Apr 11, 2006 IP
  7. corinaw

    corinaw Not Banned

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    #7
    Just FYI-

    http://Whois.sc just changed domain names. The new name is http://www.domaintools.com/

    I just started receiving new emails yesterday and checked it out. (I am a member to their domain name tools)

    whois.sc now redirects to the new site.
     
    corinaw, Apr 11, 2006 IP
    minstrel likes this.
  8. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #8
    Well, I'll be... so it does.
     
    minstrel, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  9. rewlie

    rewlie Active Member

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    #9
    i dont get any page listed when i do site:mysite.com but my PR stays at 4 now, when searching for any other method, i found my site, but not with site:mysite.com, what if my site was banned, how do i get in back ??
     
    rewlie, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  10. Michel Z.

    Michel Z. Active Member

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    #10
    But if you don't find your pages listed, that doesn't mean that your site automatically has been banned! It helps more to understand what's going on with your site. Do you know any other ways besides the one you mentioned? Thanks a lot :)
     
    Michel Z., Apr 12, 2006 IP
  11. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #11
    If the site:domain.com query returns no pages, it means you are not in the index at all.

    If you were previously in the index and you no longer are at all, that's a ban.

    If your site is new and you have never been in the index to date, that's not a ban - that's just a new site that Google hasn't indexed yet.
     
    minstrel, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  12. Jesse Abram

    Jesse Abram Peon

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    #12
    My site was in the index for months, and now, all pages have disappeared from Google. I have done nothing to deserve a ban.
    Aren't there other explanations besides ban for why this would happen?
    My site is Space Cowboy Software.
    If anyone would care to check it out and let me know if they see anything Google could possibly object to?
    Thanks,
    Jesse
     
    Jesse Abram, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  13. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #13
    Very strange.

    The home page is PR4 according to my Google toolbar.

    However, site:spacecowboysoftware.com shows no pages indexed.

    A Google query for "spacecowboysoftware.com" shows a few backlinks:

    but none of them show up for link:spacecowboysoftware.com

    Whois info shows 29-nov-2005 as the creation date. How well was the site indexed previously? And when did Google stop showing results for your site?

    What's in your robots.txt file? I get this:

     
    minstrel, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  14. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #14
    Ah-ha!

    I just did a View Source on your home page. Scroll way down to the bottom, just before where you'd expect to see the </body> and </html> closing tags and what do we see? First, you have misplaced duplicate <html> and <head> tags and then the tag telling Google NOT to index your home page or follow any links to any other pages.

     
    minstrel, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  15. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #15
    By the way, while you're fixing up your page, fix this part:

    <h3>Sections</h3>
</font>
<h3>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Main</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/fourpanels"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Four Panels of Fun</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/messageboard/"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Forums</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/madscience.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Mad Science</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/trj.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>The TRJ Archives</a><br>

<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/software.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Software</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/amusement.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Amusement of the Day</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/cookies.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Gallery of Disturbing Cookies</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/tricks.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>How to do Everything</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/archive.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Blog Archive</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/personnel.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Personnel</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/controversy.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Controversy</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/ponyexpert.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Pony Expert</a><br>
<a href="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/other.php"><img src="http://www.spacecowboysoftware.com/favicon.ico" border=0>Other Space Cowboys</a><br>
    Code (markup):
    None of those "favicon.ico" images are showing up.
     
    minstrel, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  16. Jesse Abram

    Jesse Abram Peon

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    #16
    My site was VERY well indexed, previously. It showed up in Google's index within a week of its creation, and was updated anywhere from daily to weekly.
    Newly added pages to the site would eventually show up after a few weeks.

    One day I checked Google, and found all but 3 or 4 VERY outdated copies of some insignifigant pages of my site to be missing (including the main index page).

    As for my robots.txt, I didn't have one, until since this problem occurred, so it couldn't be the cause.
    My robots.txt is blank, I created it only so that Google Sitemaps would stop reporting a 404 for it.

    I do have one theory regarding my site's disappearance, but I'm not sure how possible it is.
    if you search for "Space Cowboy Software" (with the quotes) in Google, (as well as many other queries that previously led to my site),
    the 3rd result:

    Space Cowboy
    Space Cowboy Software So in the continuing "space cowboy mmorpg" saga, I tried signing up for the game using 3 different web browsers, and it didn't seem to ...
    www.sicespace.com/spacecowboy/ - 23k - Cached - Similar pages

    Is a site that has copied a chunk of text from my site, (specifically a chunk of text that would frequently show up in google results for my site, as though the site scraped it from this). In addition, it links to my site.

    Is there a chance that Google has favoured this over my site, and deemed my site a copy? It's only a small chunk of content from my site, but again, the search result that shows up for the query mentioned above looks almost EXACTLY like my site's previous result, save for a different Title, and the address, of course, being different.

    I've since overhauled my site's content, so that text would no longer show up for my main index page, were my site in Google right now.

    Sorry this reply is so wordy, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of this :)
     
    Jesse Abram, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  17. Jesse Abram

    Jesse Abram Peon

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    #17
    WHOA!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!
    You're officially my hero for the day.

    The explanation behind this, is a PHP include() for a "users online" access counter.

    I have NO idea why it would be designed so that a "nofollow" directive would show up on the page!!!! http://forums.digitalpoint.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
     
    Jesse Abram, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  18. Jesse Abram

    Jesse Abram Peon

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    #18
    Update!
    It's not the Users Online counter, as I had originally thought,
    but rather,
    a stat counter script that is included on NEARLY EVERY PAGE OF MY SITE!!!!!
    No WONDER THey've all disappeared! I've poisoned them!

    The reason seems to be that the php document that is included, doesn't want to be indexed by google because then anyone would have access to it. I guess the programmer didn't understand that it might appear on every page as well?????

    So I guess I can chalk this one up to shoddy programming? I'm going to email the creator of the script.

    Thanks again!!!!!
     
    Jesse Abram, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  19. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #19
    But it isn't blank. It's unreadable.

    Using notepad or a plain text editor set to save in ASCII, ANSI, or UNIX mode (NOT Unicode!), create a new robots.txt file containing the following:

    User-agent: *
Disallow:
[/quote]
Upload this to overwrite what you have there now.
    Code (markup):
     
    minstrel, Apr 12, 2006 IP
  20. Jesse Abram

    Jesse Abram Peon

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    #20
    Thanks for the tipoff on this one, too! They work in my browser, but I guess the .ico filetype isn't supported in all situations in all browsers!
     
    Jesse Abram, Apr 12, 2006 IP
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