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
