Now that you know how to get reincluded in Google if banned, thanks to minty fresh advice from Google's Matt Cutts, how do you know if you've been banned at all? Some advice:
- You could read all the information that Marcela De Vivo wrote up in the
Coping
With Search Engine Penalties article in SearchDay last month.
- You could
hope (or pray that you don't!) that you get one of the new "you've been
banned" emails that Google is
currently
testing.
- You could try a new tool I spotted via SEOmoz that tries to report if you've been banned. It sees if you have pages coming up via the site: command in Google. If not, that's sometimes a sign you've been banned. It also uses a second method to check if you've been banned, though exactly what this is isn't documented. There's a thread about the tool here, but really doesn't cover the second method.
In the end, the very best way would be if Google provided a ban checking tool of its own. The current test of sending banned notification emails provides a glimmer of hope that this might come. Google's rejected such things in the past, but recent discussion between Matt and I and others at Threadwatch suggests perhaps it could happen.
Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google Testing Ban Notification -- Could New Webmaster Tools Come?
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