Site Banned / How to tell?

[AcidMaX]

I am wondering how you can tell if google has banned or blocked a particular domain. I did a search for the domain and 1 link popped up but PR is 0.

Appreciate any help you can give.

Thanks,
Andy

[jennym]

It is my understanding that if it shows up at all in Google, it is not banned. If it previously had PR, and is now PR0, then it has been penalized.

I am sure if I am wrong, someone will be along soon to correct me.

[AcidMaX]

Can anyone verify this? It's not one of my sites, just one a friend has. When I do a search for the sites domain without the .com it pulls up a few pages but shows PR0.

Andy

[Bill]

It sounds like a natural zero to me, not banned.

If it has pages showing up in google, it's not banned, by definition.

True banning is comparitively rare.

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Bill
It sounds like a natural zero to me, not banned.

If it has pages showing up in google, it's not banned, by definition.

True banning is comparitively rare.

Could the site grow back in its PR and get better rankings when its in this state?

Andy

[DangerDave]

AcidMaX,

Did the domain have multiple pages listed before?

Does Googlebot visit the domain?

If it did/has not.. then I would agree will Bill.. that it is a normal zero. As Bill said.. a truly banned domain won't show up at all.

DD

[Bill]

That's a harder question, because it brings up the spectre of the "permanent zero".

Permanent zeros are domains that, for some reason that has yet to be determined, stay zeros no matter what you do to them, even tho they are clearly not banned, and their pages do still stay in the serps, just never placing very well.

All the permanent zero's I know about are older domains, from 2001 or earlier.

Bottom line is there is no way to know for sure wether any specific domain has a "permanent zero" without watching it over time. (and there's a lot of dispute over what perm zero's actually are... I suspect they are an old penalty google once applied, but no longer uses.)

If it's a newer domain chances are it just has no good backlinks. Check its backlinks- if the existing backlinks should have given it a higher pagerank, be a little cautious.

Only way to know for sure is to give it some good backlinks and watch it over time. Since "official" pr is only updated a few times a year now, it takes a while for this test to work.

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by DangerDave
AcidMaX,

Did the domain have multiple pages listed before?

Does Googlebot visit the domain?

If it did/has not.. then I would agree will Bill.. that it is a normal zero. As Bill said.. a truly banned domain won't show up at all.

DD

DD yes the site used to have tons of pages indexed and was at one time high up with the keyword "fuck" but now its no where to be found except when typing in something like (Example: smutlinks instead of smutlinks.net). It returns a couple pages and thats it.

It also still shows about 2500 link backs when running the link: domain.com command.

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Bill
That's a harder question, because it brings up the spectre of the "permanent zero".

Permanent zeros are domains that, for some reason that has yet to be determined, stay zeros no matter what you do to them, even tho they are clearly not banned, and their pages do still stay in the serps, just never placing very well.

All the permanent zero's I know about are older domains, from 2001 or earlier.

Bottom line is there is no way to know for sure wether any specific domain has a "permanent zero" without watching it over time. (and there's a lot of dispute over what perm zero's actually are... I suspect they are an old penalty google once applied, but no longer uses.)

If it's a newer domain chances are it just has no good backlinks. Check its backlinks- if the existing backlinks should have given it a higher pagerank, be a little cautious.

Only way to know for sure is to give it some good backlinks and watch it over time. Since "official" pr is only updated a few times a year now, it takes a while for this test to work.

Site was registered in 2000 and has been up for a while. I just dont want to share the domain without me being the one who owns it, but I will pass the information on. I put in the last post as well that it has like 2600 back links.

Thanks for all the help so far.

Andy

[Linkster]

When you ran the link: command did you have the space <---
in there? if so I would rerun it without the space
then look at the sites that are listed as backlinks to see if they have any "shown" PR
The only time Ive seen this happen where it was not some sort of small penalty being applied for something - was when the linking structure of the site or the server admin had done something screwy that prevented the pages from being properly botted - and since a lot of PR is passed between site pages it can have some effect.
I would look at any hosting changes or IP, script or other changes that may have been made?

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Linkster
When you ran the link: command did you have the space <---
in there? if so I would rerun it without the space
then look at the sites that are listed as backlinks to see if they have any "shown" PR
The only time Ive seen this happen where it was not some sort of small penalty being applied for something - was when the linking structure of the site or the server admin had done something screwy that prevented the pages from being properly botted - and since a lot of PR is passed between site pages it can have some effect.
I would look at any hosting changes or IP, script or other changes that may have been made?

Without the space it had 0 link backs with the space it had 2600. I guess my ultimate question is based on what you guys have heard so far, with some site changes and such do you think this site could be brought back?

Andy

[Bill]

Did it have a known higher pr before? Or has it always been a zero or some lower pr?

If it's a "mechanical zero" from some technical problem, it'll come back naturally. If it's one of the theoretical "small penalties" that Linkster mentioned, it's probably fucked.

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Bill
Did it have a known higher pr before? Or has it always been a zero or some lower pr?

If it's a "mechanical zero" from some technical problem, it'll come back naturally. If it's one of the theoretical "small penalties" that Linkster mentioned, it's probably fucked.

Yes it has had a PR of 5 before.

[DangerDave]

OK... based on...

- Yes it has had a PR of 5 before.

- Without the space it had(?s) 0 link backs

- but now its no where to be found except when typing in something like....


I would say it has been penalised. What for.. I can't say without seeing the dom.


As Bill said... it could be a "mechanical zero" and therefore it may return... but I have a feeling its at least semi-permanent and it won't be back.

Only way to test it is to keep gaining ranked links to it, and watch it over the next 6 mths.

DD

[Alphawolf]

Andy,

Banned is bad and you'd know it for sure.

No elements of the domain would be in the index at all.

Google gave the domain a slap on the wrist for some reason or no reason.

Had a domain with 335 or so pages indexed. Things were humming along and getting good traffic from Google.

I worked hard on the domain.

Checked stats one day to see 0 Google referrels. Hmm. Went to Google and did a search I knew I came up for and nothin'.

When you punch in your own domain name intot he search box and get:

Sorry, no information is available for the URL domain.com

* If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: domain.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "domain.com"

...that's suckage- especially when you truly have no clue WHY it was banned.

[brazz]

Originally posted by Bill
That's a harder question, because it brings up the spectre of the "permanent zero".

Permanent zeros are domains that, for some reason that has yet to be determined, stay zeros no matter what you do to them, even tho they are clearly not banned, and their pages do still stay in the serps, just never placing very well.

All the permanent zero's I know about are older domains, from 2001 or earlier.

Bottom line is there is no way to know for sure wether any specific domain has a "permanent zero" without watching it over time. (and there's a lot of dispute over what perm zero's actually are... I suspect they are an old penalty google once applied, but no longer uses.)

If it's a newer domain chances are it just has no good backlinks. Check its backlinks- if the existing backlinks should have given it a higher pagerank, be a little cautious.

Only way to know for sure is to give it some good backlinks and watch it over time. Since "official" pr is only updated a few times a year now, it takes a while for this test to work.

In 2000/2001, Google applied a major penalty.
I was punished because I had used the doorway generator of WebPositionGold; at the time, I saw folks with heavily interlinked domains also being punished. The penalty was PR0 and a sharp drop in referrals and bot visits; not even sites with listings in dmoz and Y! were forgiven.

I kept the sites until early this year, in hopes that they would come back (they remained at dmoz all along, and I added some links); I sent mails to G asking for reinclusion, to no avail. This year, I gave up and didn´t renew the domains.
I only kept one of the domains, because of the Y! listing. It didn´t have doorways, but I believe it was considered guilty by association. This domain is PR0 until today, it is cached by G, but I hardly see any referrals.

Google is merciless, sometimes.

[Bill]

Yes, Brazz, I have 5 of the same myself, old domains that are perm zeros, caused I believe by the same thing- the use of a "doorway" page generator on those domains back in 2000.

They still get non-google traffic, so I keep them going, altho I do keep them kinda isolated from my other domains.

Those are the only perm zero's that I have personally studied up close. Earlier this year a few people started reporting cases that are similar to the old perm zero's- domains with good pr suddenly turning zero and losing most listings because of that, but not being banned in the traditional sense.

But it's a little too soon to know of these new cases are also going to be perm zeros. It's just too early to tell, they could have been the result of something else.

But I suspect that these new cases are also going to be permanent zero's. I now think the domain that Andy is talking about is also one of these cases.

[RawAlex]

Interesting for me, two domains that I felt were doomed forever had finally starting to show some PR again. For the longest time they were PR0 with only the URL in google, no cache no nothing. Probably 3 - 4 years of this. Now they are showing PR1 and PR2... not big numbers, but certainly much better than PR0.

Domains are cheap. Move along and try something else.

Alex

[Linkster]

One other thing to check - when you do a search for the sites' title - in quotes - do any other sites come up which also may have a snippet that looks like "borrowed" material
I wouldnt click on any of them if they do but it would be interesting to know if there is anyone cloaking the site/page to Google - usually there will not be a cached copy in the serp listings - but the text in the snippet will be right off the page that got the 0. Let us know as this is something that can be fixed. Its a little spam technique thats become very prevalent in the last year and causes dupe penalties and the other effects youve seen

[AcidMaX]

Well we are still trying to figure out why its PR0. They emailed Google and they told them that it was not penalized or removed, I don't know if Google lies about it to the site they removed or not but , when I do the "Site Title" search and variations nothing comes up either. I am not sure what the problem could be other than something keeping their site from being spidered on their side.

[Bill]

Google always sends that form letter. It's meaningless.

[Bill]

Originally posted by Linkster
One other thing to check - when you do a search for the sites' title - in quotes - do any other sites come up which also may have a snippet that looks like "borrowed" material

Linkster, have you seen this actually affect the pr of a page? I've seen it throw pages back into the depths of the serp but can't say I've personally, proveably seen it cause a reduction in pr.

We've all seen cases of duplicate pages having been put up, where google picks one of the pages, assigns it rank, then devalues the other copies.

But for a page with established pr losing that pr because a dupe is put up- if I've ever seen a case of that I'm not remembering it right now.

Kicked out of the serps by copy theft, yes. (lousy copy theives...)

[Bill]

The more I read about this, the more I'm thinking that Linkster could be on the right track.

That this is not a traditional penalty like a pure dupe penalty, that this might be the work of the new meta refresh trick.

The leading clue is the change in PR. The new meta refresh trick does, apparently, kill the original pages pr, in the same way that a refresh traditionally does, but backwards, if you follow my meaning.

I guess the way to tell is to pick a unique string of text on your index page, and search for it with quotes. If you find it on a page that isn't yours in the google serps, chances are you are the victim of the meta refresh trick.

Apparently it allows you to truly steal pagerank.

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Bill
The more I read about this, the more I'm thinking that Linkster could be on the right track.

That this is not a traditional penalty like a pure dupe penalty, that this might be the work of the new meta refresh trick.

The leading clue is the change in PR. The new meta refresh trick does, apparently, kill the original pages pr, in the same way that a refresh traditionally does, but backwards, if you follow my meaning.

I guess the way to tell is to pick a unique string of text on your index page, and search for it with quotes. If you find it on a page that isn't yours in the google serps, chances are you are the victim of the meta refresh trick.

Apparently it allows you to truly steal pagerank.

If some of the trades are with other sites they have that have changed, and are now refreshed/ redirected. Ie., they had site A running and they moved all that traffic to site B. However this site only has a hard link trade with site A that is now refreshed to site B. Could this be the problem (I hope that makes sense). I know they have changed some of their sites recently and bought other sites that they wanted the traffic for and refreshed them to their new site. Just wondering if this might be the issue.

Sorry for all the evasiveness at the moment, just trying to keep their info private as much as possible since they are a client.

Andy

[DangerDave]

Unless a huge number of sites are redirecting.... I dont think this would have any bearing on your friends site.

DD