Anyway, I thought I'd share the post from my blog with others just in case you have the same problem or you're not even sure where to look - there are some easy steps to check for hidden links and how to submit a reconsideration request!
Getting Banned by Google, and Upgrading WordPress
This Post was written by Sara from Ms. Adventures in Italy
9 comments:
Good luck with getting Google to change its mind. I was banned a year ago, for allegedly illegal clicks (which of course I did not do) -- and I appealed twice, but no luck. Hope you have a better result than I did -- Google never paid me a dime of what I earned from running ads.
Hi Sara - the link doesn't seem to be working?
When you say 'banned from google' - does this mean in terms of advertising only. I take it you are still allowed to use their products?
I think Sara is talking about her blog being banned from Google search results (no longer indexed by google) and Lydia is talking about being banned from Google AdSense, which aren't the same thing. I'm sorry to hear that both didn't have equally successful resolutions.
How do you *know* if your blog is banned from google search results?
Go to www.google.com. Type in the name of one of your recent posts. (Pick a post title that's not too common.) It should be right at the top. Sara's post tells what to do if you don't fine yourself in those search results.
I love this blog, thanks for sharing.
- George Ya76oo
This happened to me last weekend. Ironically I noticed a unusual amount of activity on Site Meter with the current traffic. I had receieved a comment that was spam.I couldnt figure out what was going on, and something told me to delete the bogus spam comment link. I did, and I was allowed access. So delete any comments that seem suspect.
I also use Wordpress and am upgrading to avoid this from happening. This site has more details on how the issue: http://www.tipstrickstoolstechniques.com/?p=113
The same thing happened to me at the beginning of April -- hundreds of invisible spam links were inserted into my header and footer files. Upgrading my WordPress installation closed the security hole, and I had to manually edit out the invisible links in the header/footer.
You can see if you've been hit by viewing your Page Source code, and looking for literally hundreds of stupid links to things like viagra, bad credit, etc. Another hint if you are using Google AdSense is that your Google Ads will no longer be relevant. Mine no longer displayed packed lunch and bento-related ads, but bad credit ads (hey, better than Viagra, I guess!).
Anyway, the result was a deindexing by Google search for over three weeks in April, which they informed me of via a message in my Google Webmaster Tools page (but no e-mail or other push notification). I immediately fixed the problem and asked for an appeal, also informing Google Ads of the search issue (avoiding banning, I think). They reindexed me three weeks later.
Thankfully I'm not overly reliant on Google search for traffic, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make a dent. I blogged about the hacking incident here: http://lunchinabox.net/2008/04/07/hacked/
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