I have been heavily monitoring this section of DP about all the "google dances" and "right methods" and "how NOT to get penalized" and everything else. But I have not seen a thread that talks about what to do if you ALREADY have been penalized? Besides the obviously reasons as to "yeah i copied an entire page" from someone and have all kinds of duplicate content on my website. But what if you dont really know what you did? How can you find out? How can you ask google? Is it smart to ask google why you have been penalized? Where to look at for answers? Where to find possible reasons why you might have been penalized? If you have been penalized in the past, how long did it take for the penalty to get back to normal .. or what exactly do you think you did that sparked the penalty to be set on your site? How long to wait (on average) before you start wondering if your just caught up in the google dance or are you penalized until you take further action? I think you guys get my drift .. can anyone shed some light on this, should we copyscape every single one of our pages and rewrite our pages if someone has copied .. or what .. Let's see what some of you experts can say or give your opinion on this topic since it seems to be mentioned in about every 3 or 4 posts of the past 2-3 weeks in this Google section. Thanks
Just to shed some light on me and wanted to make another post about it so the first one didnt get so long, I have been doing SEO work for about two years now, and never have I been penalized so I dont know what suddenly sparked this. I have a few things in mind, which I would be happy to comment on if people actually start to comment and respond in this thread! Thanks in advance! I hope this thread really catches fire and sheds some light to current and future DP'ers!
contact the google support to ask for the specific details to see if you can revise your error. wait, wait... and never do it the next time.
The only thing you can do is to appeal and hopefully they will listen. Of course you need to provide valid reasons and accompanying details on why it won't happened again.
But what if you dont really know what you did? Most of the time you know what went wrong. Even if you don't know, with a little effort you can get to know. How can you find out? If you have read my post that how to avoid website penalization where i wrote few basic points those can harm you. Now you are already penalized, you can go through all those points to verify in which point you went against Google. How can you ask google? You can always ask to Google either from Google webmaster reconsideration or direct mail to Google support with your problem. But make sure before mailing to them, you cleaned all dirt of your website upto your best. Is it smart to ask google why you have been penalized? Why not, if you are not sure about what went wrong. You run your website( service ) and suddenly Google penalized you, hurt your business. If you are confident enough that you are right. What is wrong asking Google that clarify the reason of penalization. Google people may not reply you in front face, but they do well from back. Where to find possible reasons why you might have been penalized? I think i have already said, read the points which can be responsible for penalization and now once you are already penalized, check those points again to verify what went wrong. If you have been penalized in the past, how long did it take for the penalty to get back to normal .. or what exactly do you think you did that sparked the penalty to be set on your site? For me, i am not sure. Once my pagerank dropped 2 points and it was my small mistake( some stupid Link exchange ). As i said earlier, i just cleared the dirt and sent a reconsideration request and within a week, I got my pagerank back. As i said earlier, Google replies in this way. Google listen to everyone and Google is your friend. How long to wait (on average) before you start wondering if your just caught up in the google dance or are you penalized until you take further action? This is really a good question, Sometimes you are not really sure that things went wrong or its just Google dance. But i would say, Google dance is for very short time, If you will wait and see, you will get to know what actually happened. I am not sure what can be done here other than just waiting or if you feel that you are really doing something that can sure hurt your website then in that period, atleast you can clear that because sooner or later that thing is going to give you some trouble. Hope I answered all of your question to the best of my knowledge. Lets wait for response from other DP senior members.
How do you go about doing this? - That is getting ahold of google for asking them why you got penalized and asking them to lift the penalty off of your site?? I am going to do this today!