Just wondering whether my theory is right ... We all agree that a website that is banned by Google is removed from the index; We all agree that a website might still be in the index, but could be penalized; Has anyone ever had a banned website, fixed whatever needed to be sorted, filed a re-inclusion request and got his website back in the index and ranking as good (or bad) as it used to? I believe that whilst websites can be re-included in the index, the penalties in ranking imposed on them are not lifted immediately and stay for months or even years after. Penalties simply need to 'expire' as Matt Cutts almost implied in one of his own blog posts. Anyone agree or have proof of the opposite?
Umm .. Yes, bought a Deleted domain long back .. 3-4 Years back!! As far as I remember, Google was crawling my website regularly but my site was not in Google index. After I reported this problem it took around 3 months to unban my website. I got immediate traffic boost-up from Google. Did a blog post about this !! (At that time there was no-such thing called Google webmaster tool, So I was asked to mail them regarding the matter).
Yes, agree. 2 of my sites has banned from index and I have submit for re-consideration since 1 week ago. Not receive any feed back yet.
Thanks for your reply and comments. However since it wasn't your domain, you are not sure it started ranking as good or as bad as it used to before the ban, or for how long any penalties were imposed for (since it was a deleted domain). Your re-inclusion request got it back in the index, but any ranking penalties might have just expired on their own due to the time factor. Another guy on Matt Cutt's blog wrote that they have been fixing a penalized website for years, and just recently (all of a sudden, when they almost gave up hope) it's back to ranking. By coincidence Matt Cutts wrote "we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites", hmm ...
I believe, Minimum 1 PR Update is always there !! This is the time they lift older penalties !! My Domain got lifted at the same time, However JohnMu was not agreed about this but i believe this is the fact !
Matt Cutts did mention the term 'expire', not 'lift'. That implies that penalties will expire and not lifted necessarily. Some people had to wait for years for their penalties to expire, some are still waiting ...
Ya I have requested 2 times....... and I got all SERPS back..... But usually google wont send you reply