Since one of the services I specialize in is investigating site bans, I often get approached by site owners who think their sites have been banned. However, it is not always true and very often, site owners take a penalty for a ban.
Of course, to a site owner, both are equally bad: the site stops getting traffic and customers, it affects the business and results in lack of income. But in reality, a penalty and a ban are two different things and should be treated differently.
First of all, let look at this question: why do sites get banned? (We are looking at Google first of all as it is known for banning sites more than any other search engine).
Google has webmaster guidelines which partially explain what it does not like about sites. Namely, this bit:
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don’t send automated queries to Google.
- Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
- Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
- Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Some of the sites guilty of the above are kicked out of Google SERPs algorithmically, others are filtered out as a result of manual review (here is Google’s guide for manual reviewers that has leaked some time ago and been spotted by Henk Van Ess – a MS Word document). If manual reviewers start coming across certain spammy patterns often enough, the algorithm is tweaked to filter these patterns automatically.
A site banned by Google disappears from its SERPs completely, unlike a penalized site. Having a drop in positions, however bad it is, is NOT a sign of the site ban. Having a PageRank drop is NOT a sign of a ban.
Here is a quick check you can run if you suspect your site has been banned. To start with, search for your site’s name in Google. If it still comes up in the search results you are not banned. If you do not see it there try searching for your site’s URL – if it still comes up in the SERPs you are not banned.
It may be, however, more difficult to identify the reasons of a drop due to a penalty than of a ban. Normally, if your site has really been banned it is obvious from the look at the site itself why it happened. Bans happen mostly due to onsite factors. With penalties, it is not that straightforward and could be anything from your paid link getting reported to a competitor’s malicious activity (an example of which, albeit quite an extreme one, can be seen here). It has been confirmed by Matt Cutts of Google that negative SEO is possible.
The ways to figure out what caused the ban – or penalty – include, but are not limited to, checking your backlinks and searching for duplicate content. These can be the signs that can help you discover where the problem lies. Other issues may be found in your site’s host possible downtime, unusual activity in your server logs, unfamiliar files on your server, etc.
What are the best ways to fight a site ban? Officially, Google offers an option to submit a reinclusion request once the issues due to which the ban occured have been fixed – but to be honest, a reinclusion request is pretty much equal to declaring yourself defeated to Google. It is much better and more effective for your site to have Google reindex it out of its own will. How to achieve it? Add some fresh content to the site and grab a few high quality links that are as clean as can be.
Should you report to Google sites that have caused you trouble by, e.g., copying your content? It all depends, if your site is older and more authoritative than the duplicating sites it may be unnecessary as Google will manage to correctly attribute the authorship and the original source of the content. You can file a complaint if your content is copyright protected. Otherwise, it will be pretty difficult to prove who’s wrong and who’s right.