If you have an online business then there is nothing worse than finding out that Google has penalized your site. It can happen to websites that are big or small. The classic example is John Chow who violated Google’s guidelines to rank for the popular keyword phrase “make money online”.
Google soon caught on and banned John Chow. Now, now only does he not rank for make money online but he doesn’t even rank for his own name. You can read more about the story here.
So how do you know if you’ve been penalized? Well in 1995 Google initiated a program to email webmasters to tell them when their sites are violated Google’s webmaster guidelines and when they were removed from the index. Earlier in 2007 Google put these emails on hold because people began spamming webmasters pretending to be Google and telling people that their websites were banned. This was mostly happening in Europe.
In July Google launched a new feature in their Webmaster Tools to tell website owners about violations but not everyone is a registered user (Side Note – if you have not yet signed up for Webmaster Tools, get on there today! It’s free and gives you loads of information on how Google treats your website).
So the good news is that last week, Google announced that in addition to the Webmaster Tools notifications they will be resuming their email campaign. If you suspect you have been penalized, keep an eye out for an email and log into your Webmaster Tools. By the same token, if you see an email from Google make sure to double check the legitimacy before assuming you have been penalized.
Evan Carmichael
Matthew Toren is an Award Winning Author, Serial Entrepreneur, and Investor. He Co-Founded YoungEntrepreneur.com along with his brother Adam. Matthew is co-author of the newly released book:Small Business, Big Vision: “Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right” and also co-author of Kidpreneurs.
What a shame to have all of your blood, sweat, and tears banned because you just didn’t know that you had broken the rules.
Thanks for reminding us about what happens when we don’t play by the rules…or sometimes when we just aren’t aware that we’ve broken the rules.
It’s great to see that Google will, at least, give you notification before they ban your site.
Again…thanks
[...] YoungEntrepreneur.com has posted a quick piece about Google penalizing your site. In it, they mention that Google has, last week, reinstituted the practice of emailing webmasters in the event that they are blacklisted. They were doing that originally, but they had stopped in favor of simply posting notices into Webmaster Tools. The problem is that not all site owners are using Webmaster Tools, so they decided to start email again. Good move. [...]
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