Getting nailed and booted from Google is often every webmaster’s worst fear. It doesn’t take long for the owner of the business to start asking questions and it isn’t long after when the screaming starts.
First, a definition of a reinclusion request. According to Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google, “If you’ve been experimenting with SEO, or you employ a SEO company that might be doing things outside Google’s guidelines, and your site has taken a precipitous drop recently, you may have a spam penalty. A reinclusion request asks Google to remove any potential spam penalty.”
With that in mind, the place you want to start is to analyze the site in question. You want to check for:
– Hidden text
– Hidden links
– Cloaking
How do you check for hidden links?
With malware infections becoming more and more common online these days, sites and blogs are being “compromised” without the webmaster even knowing it. Typically, the Spammer will place dozens, hundreds, or even thousands and links “hidden” in the code to their Viagra, Casino, Porn, etc. sites.
How can you check? It’s pretty simple.
Just do a site command in Google. For example:
site:patioshoppers.com casino
This will check the domain for any reference to the word “casino.” If you get a few hundred pages returned and you are NOT in the casino business, chances are VERY good you’ve been hacked.
Other phrases you should check would be:
- porn
- viagra
- cialis
Just four and it will take you less then two minutes to run the check. If you find evidence of a hack attempt and this site is a prospect’s site, guess what? You’ve probably just landed their business.
For future searches, I would highly recommend setting up a Google Alert.
If these items appear on the home page, the site is more likely to get nailed by a penalty than if the problem occurs on sub pages. Do you employ “doorway pages” that do a JavaScript or some other redirect to a different page on the site or to another domain? Were you trying to use some automated program to get links or scrape Google for content or results? Review Google’s Webmaster guidelines and ensure that you are in compliance with their rules and regulations FIRST before doing the reinclusion request.
Once you have made the change, it is time to do the reinclusion request. Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and on the right side of the main Dashboard will be a section called “Talk to Google.” Click the “Request Reconsideration” link and choose the site which is affected. You will then acknowledge that you have read Google’s Guidelines, the site currently does NOT violate the guidelines and you will follow the guidelines in the future. Basically, Google wants to ensure you won’t be a repeat offender.
According to Matt, Google wants to know two things: 1) that any spam on the site is gone or fixed, and 2) that it’s not going to happen again. “I’d recommend giving a short explanation of what happened from your perspective: what actions may have led to any penalties and any corrective action that you’ve taken to prevent any spam in the future. If you employed a SEO company, it indicates good faith if you tell us specifics about the SEO firm and what they didn’t assist us in evaluating reinclusion requests. Note that SEO and mostly-affiliate sites may need to provide more evidence of good faith before a site will be reincluded; such sites should be quite familiar with Google’s quality guidelines.”
How long do you have to wait for the reinclusion request to take effect? It greatly depends on when the reinclusion request is reviewed by a Google engineer. For small stuff like hidden text you are looking at about 2-3 weeks, but the heavier stuff, can be 6-8 weeks … and this is AFTER it has been read and dealt with. And a big, big issue is if the reinclusion request is APPROVED! Many are not, so keep that in mind.
Some things that Matt feels you should keep in mind when doing a reinclusion request:
- Don’t bother mentioning that you spend money in Google AdWords or if you’re an AdSense publisher. The person who will look at your reinclusion request doesn’t care if you have a business relationship with Google. Remember, we need to know 1) that the spam has been corrected or removed and 2) that it isn’t going to happen again.
- I would request reinclusion for one domain at a time. It looks bad if you had 20+ sites all thrown out at once.
The second point is a very important one … keep it in mind. Just do one reinclusion request at a time, and make sure you are actually banned or penalized before you request a reinclusion request.
The Google Search Quality Team released a video in April 2009 which covers tips on filing a reinclusion request.
Examples they give are:
– Just sending a note “Our site adheres to the Google Guidelines now” isn’t enough. Real people read the requests so you need to be as detailed as possible. In other words, Google wants a full confession.
– Technical issues such as server time outs, servers being down, duplicate content, etc. do not cause penalties. It is best to “wait it out” and let the system make adjustments instead of filing a reinclusion request.
– Don’t Spam Google with multiple requests, just one complete report is fine. However, if there is additional information you need to share, sending in an updated report is fine.