Here's another link to an article that discusses if you are banned OR merely filtered or penalized...when to actually request a reinclusion: http://www.stuntdubl.com/2005/08/23/se-banning-guide/
LOL! Saw the title of this thread and thought "oh, I wonder if they know Matt cutts has just been writing about this?"
This worked for me. My site Site-Sift Web Directory was banned back on Aug 24 and I followed Matt's advice on his blog and yesterday it was back in the Google index. This shows that Google is working harder to help webmasters out. WAY TO GO GOOGLE!
Yes, that is who you are dealing with. Matt Cutts is writing about it because he is an employee of Google
Nice article. But what do you do if you have no idea why you are being penalized? You can't exactly tell Google something is fixed if you don't know what the problem is.
Yeah. I have NO idea why I am banned. Never spammed, and I didn't even optimize it for SEO let alone use any black hat technique! The only thing possible would be the duplicate content, but isn't a ban too extreme for this?