Everyday we see more and more sites sprouting like mushrooms out of nowhere. Many of these websites can be considered good and helpful while others would only bring you harm. It is the latter one which Google is trying to avoid. As a precautionary measure Google hired some of the “Geekiest” programmer in the planet to provide “fences” and keep these goons and beasts from infesting the cyberworld.
The most common thing for Google to do is to ban such websites so that no people would even bother to enter/visit those sites.
If you’re new to the internet world and doesn’t have a clue on the things Google check if a website should be banned or not then READ ON. It’s better the know the rules of the game before playing it, right?
How to know if your website has been banned by Google?
Before we start, we should first know if our website was already banned or not. Otherwise you would be living in “fear” all your life for no reasons.
First, you can enter your website into Google’s search box. Let’s have an example domain name: www.myqwertysite.com. Normally, if you’ve been using this site for quite sometime now, Google would list the results pertaining to your website.
But if you see the image below, and you know your site was working “fine” before. Then, Google must have banned your site.
Another indicator you could use is by downloading the Google Toolbar. After installing the toolbar, visit your site.
Now, if the toolbar is completely “Gray or stoned” then it is a strong indicator that you’ve been WIPED-OUT the “cyberzone”. Don’t worry, ‘coz now you’re about to know Google’s Golden Rules.
Why do websites get banned?
HIDDEN TEXTS
These are keywords encoded in the website which the web developer don’t want other people to see. The purpose of these hidden texts are simple, for Search engine visibility. Search engines are like sensors, they scan for these “keywords” in the context of your web pages.
But of course, the developer doesn’t want other people to see these “hidden texts”. Who wants to see unnecessary words anyway? They’re just eyesores.
To see what I mean take a look at these examples:
Notice additional “texts” on the upper left-hand side of the right picture? Hidden texts can be seen by hitting “ctrl a” selecting the whole page. Other techniques employed on hidden text includes setting text behind images, setting Font to 0 or using CSS to hide text.
This is a very “cheesy” way of having good page rank, bad for those discovered by Google lately.
ALTERNATE IMAGE TAG SPAM
Some spammers will use attached images/photos to get away with keyword spamming. How? by using alternate texts/image of the photos. Alternate texts/images can be seen by hovering your mouse over the photo/image. This was actually intended to be used by “blind” people. Thanks to this “blackhat” technique, it seems those conditions are applied to people who has 20-20 visition too!
See what I mean? A little tricky there huh, but Google is more intelligent than these guys are.
META TAG STUFFING
To give you a background, Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page, after the title tag. Readers cannot see these tags but the search engines can. These tags provide information on the web pages that are important to user agents/search engines.
So what did the spammers do? of course they SPAMMED it! They generated the same meta tag keywords several times, which is simply ridiculous and non sense.
Example:
<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT= “Big,big, BiG, Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,Big,big, BiG,”>
No, no, no, Google already knows you baby. Today, Google and other search engines doesn’t use Meta tags anymore to rank sites
TITLE TAG STUFFING
This is another variation of using keywords as a SPAM tool. Con web artist put their keywords repeatedly on the title tag. See example below:
Google will severely penalize or have your website banned completely for doing this kind of trick.
CLOAKING
This happens when a website returns “different” contents to Google/other search engines compared to its regular users. In other words this is what we call “misdirection” of users (may it be search engines or users). This could lead to harmful attacks on the clients’ side when they click the link provided by Google and other search engines.
This is primarily used for SEO optimization purposes. SEO firms want to make their websites searchable at the first page of search engines so what they did was to make 2 separate web pages, one that is GOOD to the eyes of the Robots (Search engines) and the other to their users.
Cloaking a website could deceive users at first but once they detect the difference, WHAPACK! you’re out.
DUPLICATE CONTENT OR WEBSITES
Google upholds copyright infringement thus it penalizes those website copycats. The bad thing about it is that Google spiders don’t have the idea which one is the original web page. Thus, if you’re the original author you aren’t safe from getting ban because of this.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Perform a Google search using some texts in your web page, place it in quotation marks and see if some websites are using it “word for word”.
If you do find someone using your copy, report it to Google.
You can also use this helpful link to test if someone copied your website without your consent! Click COPYSCAPE.
REDIRECT PAGES
This is another form of misdirection use by con web artists to trick you. Probably you have experienced browsing a web page, let’s say about computers then when you go and see the succeeding pages you get “transported” to an Adult site?! Sounds familiar?
Not all redirection are wrong, normally this is used when the web page you are actually viewing was already discontinued or a new web page was built instead. But, when the subject gets fishy (the page you were redirected to isn’t connected to something you are browsing) then probably this is a malicious redirect site.
Contact your web developer right away if you see this on your web pages.
WRAP UP
These are some of the many ways Google will ban or severely penalize your website. The point is, why do such things when you can be at the top of the rank using legal means? No fuzz, no headaches. Wise web-developers love these, easy-go-lucky publishers hate it.
If you succeed once, it doesn’t mean you will succeed the second time. Sooner or later, Google and other search engine agents will catch-up and you will get caught. So take this one piece of advice, DON’T EVEN TRY IT SON!
Now as for your homework, try to read other materials to help you avoid getting banned by google. It will save your wallet and your sanity as well.
(source: seomaterial)
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