Is
it a penalty?First, you need to be sure you actually have a penalty. Using
the site:www.domain.com search is one way to find out
that your site is nowhere; another way is to search for some unique
text from your home page. Neither search is useful for new sites, which
may simply be waiting to be listed. In most cases, it's the site statistics or
a drop in trade that brings the bad news. If your site has been penalised,
you need to start by being very honest with your self, and undoing anything you
did that may breech Search Engine Guidelines. Check out the Guidelines carefully: Google
Webmaster Help Center Yahoo!
Search Content Quality Guidelines Live
Search Site Owner Help Ask:
About: Webmasters For now, I'd clean the site up completely; remove
the resources pages, check anything that could be against search engine guidelines.
READ the search engine guidelines. I'm not suggesting this as a penance
- it's purely practical, and works something like this: If (for example)
the main offence is the links, then the Google penalty is simply a 'bad neighborhood'
penalty - clean up, and things will often gradually improve (reappearance in Google
is your proof, though a good position will take much longer). I would not
manually resubmit, nor - at this stage - ask for resubmission. Clean up, and it
should happen. Building and submitting a Google site map will not hurt, and will
ensure you get spidered. If you do not get good news within weeks, then
you may have to consider writing to google, requesting readmission. Don't do it
lightly - you can only do it once, and here's why: Asking Google requires
a human being to check your site. That is serious time investment by Google, in
your site. If it ain't clean, don't even think about asking a second time ...
it won't happen! And not only do they demaind a clean site, but some kind of assurance
that the problems will not be repeated. Painful though it may be, you have
to think long term. Once you have checked for the major issues, then look for
the little things; because once your site, for whatever reason, is in the Search
Engines Sights, then all those little things that didn't matter, now need to be
sorted. They may not have got you the penalty, but they'll stop the site surviving
a human check. And it's the Little Things that will leave you with Sick
Site Syndrome - languishing at the foot of the results! Getting 'unpenalized'
is your best and only hope, but there's no compromises - if it's not squeeky clean,
nothing will ever get better. How do I request reinclusion of my site? Google
says: "If your site has violated our webmaster
guidelines, and you've made changes to it so that it meets our guidelines,
you can request reinclusion and we'll evaluate your site. In addition, if
you recently purchased a domain that you think may have violated our guidelines
before you owned it, you can use the reinclusion request form to let us know that
you recently acquired the site and that it now adheres to the guidelines. To
request reinclusion, log in to Google
webmaster tools, click Tools, then choose the Request reinclusion link and
follow the steps outlined there." Useful pages include Pages
Yahoo! Does Not Want Included in its search submit index and MSN's What
to do when your site moves | 
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