How can you tell the difference between a Google penalty and a Google error? Is there any way to receive a notice from Google of any penalties, or errors on their side? Thank you.
No on Google being cool enough to alert you(they do index the entire world). You can check if your site is banned by using http://www.iwebtool.com/google_banned maybe, I have no idea how accurate this is. If you google "google ban tool" you will get a few of them. hope that helps, Nigel
I was just hoping there was some way to hear about a penalty that I wasn't aware of. Oh well. Yeah, that is a cool tool. In my situation it won't help though. I have 1 site with problems that is almost 100% indexed but serps are popping in and out. One day I am very high in serps for many kw's. Then it goes off the charts. Then they all come back even stronger. Then they all go away again. I guess I am taking the brunt of some problems on G's end, but I have no way of knowing for sure. Thanks for the help though. P.S. I know they index the world, but how hard would it be for G to automate a penalty notice in webmaster tools? Hell, they can use the same flipping scripts that crucify sites to drop a note to the webmaster to let them know what is going on. G could also be up front and honest about any problems (ie. data rollbacks) they are having. The G world is just too dark and secretive. A little honesty and cooperation on their end wouldn't hurt at all.