Forgive But Don't Forget! Possible Google Motto for Penalized Websites!

“I'm not sure that's true – one of my clients was completely banned from Google for a spammy link exchange program; we cleaned 'em all up and filed a reinclusion request, and they are currently #1-3 for just about every relevant search phrase you could think of. They're ranking higher now than they ever did before the penalty – but it did take about a year to work their way up to that point.”

“That's what I've seen, too. A long, slow release from "probation" as trust builds.

I do think Google always has a record of the past penalty somewhere, and any future infractions might be dealt with quite harshly. But you definitely can see a site get completely released from the ranking effects of a penalty.”

“What happened is that we built the back end database engine for a site, but then the owners took it over, built their own front end, and did their own "SEO". That included falling for an offshore company's promises of high rankings – turned out to be a totally non-relevant link farm; my client was automotive related and they had links to beauty shops and carpet cleaners. They had no idea what had been done or what was wrong; all they knew was no traffic from Google for over two years. I noticed, pulled a couple strings to verify they were in fact penalized; we cleaned all the links up, sent in three reinclusion requests, and eventually we were back in (this part took about two months). Then, since we hadn't touched the site in three years, we modified a few page titles, and eventually it rose to the top. All I have is anecdotal evidence, obviously, but it's anecdotal evidence over around 400 sites. Squeaky clean and waiting ends up working 90% of the time. The problem is, nobody wants to wait. Sometimes we can't wait.”

“Recently I was hit very hard (can read about this in Google Search News 3692018.htm page of webmasterworld). Following tedster advice, I noticed thousands of broken links. Fixing it, however, DIDN'T HELP

The BAD, BAD, BAD BAD thing here is that I can't see anywhere a little help on what's going on… in WMT, on SERPs cache date …I can't figure out what's going on now…(and before).

NO FEEDBACK AT ALL.

And after years of hard work this is simply crazy.”