How to Get Your Site Unbanned from Google
Getting banned by the search engines is something that every webmaster dreads. No web site can survive without being indexed by Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. If, however, your web site does get banned by the search engines, there are certain steps you can follow to get your site on the fast track to being reinstated and re-indexed.
The first rule is to NOT GET BANNED. This sounds silly to list, but the reality is that the team here at Overmortal has been building web sites since 1996 and the rarity of seeing and/or hearing about banned sites in our combined years of experience makes it pretty clear that you must have been doing something really wrong to get it banned in the first place. Sometimes though, you don't have control of your own destination. What if you purchase a domain that has already been banned?
This very thing happened to us here at Overmortal. Originally, our web site resided at www.overmortal.net because www.overmortal.com was owned by a musician named Nick Blitz (his band's name was "Over Mortal"). We were more than content with the dot net version, but when the dot com version expired on Nick, we put in an early bid in GoDaddy's backorder process and eventually we were able to maintain rights and purchase the domain name.
In the process of setting up www.overmortal.com as our primary domain, we discovered that the domain itself had been banned from Google and Yahoo (Bing - Windows Live at the time - still indexed it). This put us in a predicament where we needed to get the dot com domain unbanned.
Step #1: Let your site be what you want it to be.
Search engines require quality content. It's much easier to get a new web site indexed than to get a banned one reinstated. With banned domains, the search engines look closer and a human being decides whether or not they think you have quality content. Make sure that your web site is what you want it to be before applying for reinstatement.
In our case, we wanted to switch our domain from the dot net version to the dot com version. This meant putting our web site up at www.overmortal.com and doing a permanent redirect from www.overmortal.net. This also meant that for a certain period of time, our web site would be removed from the search engines - as the dot net version would redirect to the banned version, pulling the pages from the dot net version out of the indexes.
This was a setback that we would have to accept. We needed to show the search engines that our web site had quality content. There's no use in putting up a fake content site and then switching after we had been reinstated. Search engines appreciate honesty.
Step #2: Find the culprit.
After we had made the appropriate redirects and put our web site up under www.overmortal.com - and before we applied for reinstatement - we wanted to try to search out a reason for the domain being banned. If your domain was banned because of something you did, then you should know the reason; but for those (like our site) that were banned by a previous owner, it helps to be able to prove that you weren't the culprit.
The best tool for this is Google's Webmaster Tools. Sign up. You're going to need to in order to get your web site reinstatement anyway. Once you set up Google's Webmaster Tools for your domain, you'll be able to see what keywords Google gleaned from your web site right before it was banned. In our case, a lot of electrical equipment keywords, which means that the site wasn't banned for anything the previous owner (Nick Blitz) had done, but somebody before even him. Using this tool will give you the information you need (if you purchased a banned site) to prove to the search engines that your site has different content that the banned one.
Google's Webmaster Tools also allows you to see incoming links to your site. This will let you determine whether being banned was the result of spam sites (or other blacklisted web sites) linking back to your domain.
Step #3: Give them the details.
For Google, you'll use their Webmaster Tools to get your domain reinstated. For Yahoo, you'll have to send them an email requesting a site review. Be as detailed as possible on the situation. If you got your own domain banned and removed the offending content/blackhat SEO, then be honest and let them know. If it wasn't your doing, let them know everything that you've gathered from your research.
Google never responded to us, but our site was reinstated within four days. We sent the request on Friday and on Monday our domain was showing up. We weren't properly indexed, but at least we were showing up - and that was a huge relief.
Step #4: Be persistent.
Yahoo was a different story. We sent our request to Yahoo and it was rejected with a form letter saying that they can't include our content because of "one of the following reasons," and listed a bunch of generic reasons as to why a site might not be included. This was frustrating to say the least. We ended up re-applying, only this time we took every one of Yahoo's listed points on what a good site should have and showed them how our site matched up. We also took their list of why a site wouldn't be included and showed them how each point did not apply to our web site. We received no response from Yahoo after that, but soon found our web site in their search results. The whole process probably took about 2-3 weeks.
As with Google, Yahoo offers webmaster tools in the form of their Site Explorer. This tool is the only real way you'll be able to tell if Yahoo is starting to index pages from your site.
Step #5 Wait. Wait. Wait.
Once you're finished being persistent, you then have to be patient. It took some elbow grease to get reinstated in Yahoo, but once we were reinstated our site was indexed properly within a week, and we were once again showing up in the search listings under the terms we were prior to the switch.
With Google, it took almost two months before we regained our rankings; and even then, after making a few changes to our copy, we dropped in the rankings for a couple of weeks before returning back to our usually places.
The bottom line is: don't get your web site banned. But if you do - or if you purchase a banned domain - there are steps you can take to get reinstated. You just have to be professional, persistent and patient with the process.
