Smart Traffic SEO Tip #18 – Signs a site may be Banned from Google
Previously we discussed about avoiding links to banned sites but how would you tell if the site is banned in Google?
First, what is a banned site? A banned site is a site completely removed from Search Engine’s index, particularly Google. We can actually check this through searching in Google search box “site:www.example.com” (previously discussed). If the result is the same as below, then definitely the site is not indexed:
Your search – site:www.example.com/ – did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.
If searching “link:www.example.com” in Google Search box will also show result same as above, then that also means the site is not indexed.
Another way of checking is searching “info:www.example.com” in Google Search box. A non-indexed site will display the following:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.example.com/
* If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: www.example.com/
* Find web pages from the site www.example.com/
* Find web pages that contain the term “www.example.com/”
These kinds of sites possibly didn’t meet Google’s quality guidelines, hence linking out to them would definitely hurt your site as well. Avoid them and try not to do things that may ban your site. However, just because a site is not indexed doesn’t necessarily mean it is banned. Some sites choose not to feature in Google’s index like private sites or test sites. These will either use password protection, block the site by robots.txt or with meta no-index tags. We will have a look at these tomorrow.
