Are You Banned In Google And Yahoo!? You May Not Know It The search engines Yahoo! and Google account for over 90% of all
search inquiries on the Internet. So it is extremely important
that your web site be found in the Yahoo! and Google
directories. Google Directory: Hard To Get In, Easy To Get Out Most people know how hard it is to get listed in Google, but few
people realize how easy it is to get their site delisted
(banned) by Google. In this article we are going to discuss why
Google or Yahoo! would ban your site from their search engine.
For ease of discussion when we talk about Google, we will be
referring to both the Google and Yahoo! search engines.
How to Get Listed By Google You can submit your web site to Google via their "add URL"
feature. This method does not always work, as Google states that
they do not have to accept your site. In fact, Google tends to
index sites that are linked from other sites before they add
sites submitted via their "add URL" feature. Their logic seems
to be that if another site has determined your site to be worthy
enough to link to, then it might be worthwhile for them to visit
your site and index your content. Linking can increase your Google rankings. The rough rule of
thumb is that the more sites that link to you, the higher
ranking you'll obtain in Google. Furthermore, high-quality sites
that link to you, are worth more than low-quality sites. An
example is if the US government's VA loan program links you,
that is more valuable than a link from a one person mortgage
office, which is more valuable than a link from a site on
burrito recipes or a site about leather belts. Google looks for
links from high quality sites which are relevant, to rank your
web site. Link Farms Since search engine marketers know that links to your site can
increase your ranking, many marketers have created link farms.
Link farms are essentially web sites with a sole purpose to
provide links to other web sites. It is possible to create
hundreds and hundreds of links to your site in with just a few
keystrokes. The People Who Cast Votes Don't Decide An Election... The People
Who Count Votes Do.
Joseph Stalin Because of the importance of links, and the subsequent impact
upon your rankings, some mortgage site owners attempt to
manipulate the number of links in order to appear higher in the
search engine results. Google is aware of this and has
implemented software algorithms to prevent this from occurring. Josef Stalin knew how to achieve "good election results" -- he
simply created them. Google works the same way, you may have a
lot of links to your site but Google weighs the importance of
each link with its proprietary algorithm and only counts the
links they deem of value. Sometimes it is easier to state, what not to do than what to do.
Here's a list of "commandments" of what not to do, as stated by
the search engine rules. Thou Shall Not Receive Links From Link Farms Many of us are aware that certain banks, in the past, would "red
line" various neighborhoods. Essentially a lending institution
would take a red felt pen and outline certain neighborhoods in
the city, where they would not provide loans, thus the term "red
lining." The red lined areas are essentially to be denied due to
high risk investments or any other perceived factor that would
be detrimental to the bank's bottom line. |
Google essentially has the same practice, where they
identify bad neighborhoods (i.e. link farms) and determine
that link farms are detrimental to Google's accuracy. If
Google determines you have links from a link farm, they can
either penalize you or remove you from their directory
Thou Shall Not Redirect
Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page such
as doorway or gateway pages will cause you to get banned.
Doorway pages as they are solely built to achieve
high-rankings then cause the visitor to have to click on a
link to actually arrive at a page of substance.
Thou Shall Not Repeat, Repeat, Repeat...
If a search engine finds the exact same content among
different web sites, they may ban you. This means if your
mortgage company offers an affiliate program you are at
risk. Since many of your affiliates may simply copy your
main site onto their own URL, your site and the affiliate
site could get banned.
Thou Shall Not Spoof
Spoof pages our pages automatically produced in great
quantity with minimal content or of little value. Spoof
pages either focus on a single phrase such as "refinance
Denver home loan" or "find equity line of credit Dallas" in
order to show up for such a specific and narrow search.
Alternatively, spoofed pages can occur when search engine
Spammers and go out and copy search engine results and
include those results on their web page in an attempt to
look like they are a comprehensive site. While this
technique may work for short period of time, competitors
will usually turn these type of sites into the search
engines; who in turn will ban the sites from their results.
Thou Shall Not Hide Text
Some mortgage companies will place hundreds of keywords on a
web site and make the content so small that it is hard to
read. They do this in an attempt to cram as many keywords as
possible so that they may show higher in results. Other
techniques include hiding keywords using a "white on white"
technique. Basically, this is where a web site owner will
take a massive list of keywords and paste these keywords
onto a white background, then make the font of the keywords
white. When a visitor arrives the page looks normal. Either
of these techniques will get you banned from the search
engines.
Thou Shall Not Take Competitors to Names In Vain
Web sites that attempt to use a competitor's or brand name (eLoan
or Ditech) in an attempt to redirect traffic to their site
will get banned. They hope that the usage of a trademarked
name from a well-known competitor will result in
misdirecting visitors to their site.
You Want What Search Engines Wants
Yahoo! states on their web site, "Yahoo's Search Submit
program strives to provide the best search experience on the
Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant Web
content in response to a search query. Yahoo! designed its
Search Submit programs to improve the quality of its search
databases and thereby enhance the search user experience."
If you follow the simple plan of the giving quality content
to your visitors, without employing any link farms spoofing
or other Spamming techniques, your web site will stay
indexed in the major search engines. If not, you run the
risk of having your entire web site banned from either
Google or Yahoo!
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