Sometimes search engines can make a mistake and mark your site as spam. Other times you are knowingly or unknowingly being deceptive. If you are caught conducting search engine spam, any other sites that you own might come under scrutiny and be considered part of a bad neighborhood. Whatever the case, if you want to “come clean,” you can submit your site for reconsideration.

Requesting Google Site Re-Evaluation:

You can request that Google reconsider your site in Google Webmaster Tools. Before you submit your site for reconsideration, remove any shady pages or practices, submit a truthful report, and then wait for your site to reappear in the SERPs. This can take several weeks or more, so patience is required.

Here is what Google says when you are submitting your website’s reconsideration request (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en):

“Tell us more about what happened: what actions might have led to any penalties, and what corrective actions have been taken. If you used a search engine optimization (SEO) company, please note that. Describing the SEO firm and their actions is a helpful indication of good faith that may assist in evaluation of reconsideration requests. If you recently acquired this domain and think it may have violated the guidelines before you owned it, let us know that below. In general, sites that directly profit from traffic (e.g., search engine optimizers, affiliate programs, etc.) may need to provide more evidence of good faith before a site will be reconsidered.”

Use caution before you submit your site for reconsideration. Keep your request straight to the point. In the worst case, creating a new domain may be your only option, provided you are sure that none of your pages are employing search engine spam.

Requesting Yahoo! Site Re-Evaluation:

Yahoo! provides a web form you can use to initiate a reevaluation request. You should fill out and submit this form after you have cleaned up your site. What I said regarding Google reconsideration requests also applies to Yahoo!. Simply be honest, fix any spam, and then contact Yahoo! using the form.

Requesting Bing Site Re-Evaluation:

Bing is no different from Google and Yahoo!. It also provides an online submission method for submitting site reevaluations. You can find the online form at http://bit.ly/1NgzUo. Use the same advice I gave regarding Google and Yahoo! when submitting Bing reevaluation requests.

A poll conducted by Rusty Brick of Search Engine Round Table reveals: Most SEOs would go with the method of cleaning up their site and requesting a reconsideration request with Google. While only 9% will kill the site and start new.

Here is the poll break down:

• Clean Up The Site & Request Re-inclusion said 61 respondents or 78%
• Quit the SEO Game and Play Golf said 9 respondents or 12%
• Burn the Site & Start Fresh Idea said 7 respondents or 9%

Basically, if you break the rules and use any sneaky tactics, your site will eventually be penalized. Often, it does not take more than a few days before you are caught. Even if search engines cannot detect a particular deception through their underlying algorithms, your site (or sites) is still likely to be caught, thanks to web users reporting spam results. All major search engines provide easy ways for the public or (often angry) webmasters to report search engine spam. Here are links to forms for reporting SERP spam:

• Google - http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
• Yahoo! - http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam
• Bing - http://support.msn.com/feedbacksearch.aspx

Tags: Bing, Google, Penalization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Tips, Spam, Yahoo

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 5:50 am and is filed under Daily SEO Tips, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.