Pleasing the Google Gods & Not DeIndexing my site.

[HashtagHustler]

Hey Mozzers,

So plenty of you who follow these threads have come across my posts and have read bits and pieces of the strange dark dark gray hat webspace that I have found myself in. So I'm currently doing some research and I wanted all of your opinion too.

1. Will Google always notify you before they stop indexing your website?
2. Will Google always allow you back if you do get pulled?
3. Does Google give a grace period where they say "fix in 30 days?"?

What is every bodies experience with all of this?

[irvingw]

1. Google says they MAY send you a message in WMT

2. You need to make a reconsideration request, and if the site is found to be no longer in violation, they will allow your site to get indexed again

3. No, if you get banned it's usually because of something they feel is very serious like a site that is infected with a virus, of it violating some copyright laws. Banning is the worst thing that they can impose and when it happens it will just happen out of the blue because they don't want it in their index, so you'll get no grace period.

[WilliamKammer]

1. Consider a warning a pleasant courtesy from Google. They by no means do this on a consistent basis.

2. You can usually get back in, but the effort it takes to recover from being deindexed is demanding and probably not worth it for you naughty "dark dark grey" hat folk.

3. I agree with Irving: I've never encountered a friendly warning from Google before they destroyed all the things.

[HashtagHustler]

Thank you both.

I have inherited a website that is entangled in a very devious web of darkness. And the process of trying to expediently prune the links, dismantle the foundation, and eradicate the poor content while not drastically hurting us more is very difficult to put into words to my boss.

At the end of the day I just want to make it as clear as possible that if we get taken off Google on my watch, that I have given him all the information necessary to make an educated decision.

-TronQ

[MarieHaynes]

I can't tell from your posts whether you are just trying to remove black hat work from a site or whether you're actually engaging in black hat methods. I'm going to say some harsh stuff.  I would say that if you have to ask these questions then you really should not be going down either road unless you are working on sites that you can afford to lose permanently.  Also, in some cases if you get caught doing black hat stuff Google can take action on ALL of your sites.

I know a number of people who are really good at black hat methods.  And a good number of these guys who have been gaming Google for years can either no longer do it or are finding that it is getting harder and harder.

I work with a lot of penalized sites and there are many different kinds of penalties.  For some you get manual notification of the penalty in WMT (not a warning...just a notice that it's been penalized).  For others there is no notification at all but the algorithms just stop trusting your site.  While recovery can be possible, a good number of the sites that I consult over are completely toast because of past SEO efforts.

If you are trying to clean up a site that has been damaged by former SEO work and you are asking the questions that you have asked above, then you probably need a lot of help.  I'd make it really clear to your boss that you are not experienced in penalty cleanup but that you're doing your best and to set expectations low.

You probably already know this, but still, I felt I should comment.

[HashtagHustler]

Thank you! I do value the criticism, that's how we learn!

I want to make it clear as possible that I am not engaging in anything Blackhat in anyway shape or form. If you look back at some of my older posts, for example the one that you and EGOL commented on, it begins to paint the picture that I am working with.

I am trying to remain vague to protect the company that I am working for, although realistically I'm not sure how much that matters.

So, as I have stated before, I am pretty new to SEO in the scheme of things (seriously for about 1 year). And I am new to this company (about a month). As you pointed out in the last paragraph I have no idea what I'm doing in this realm. I understand SEO theory, but the problem that I am running into, and probably part of that makes my questions appear blackhat, is that I am not even sure how to identify exactly what has been done with this website.

In the last post of mine that you commented on we discussed the various updates and how the may or may not have effected the website that I am working on. Now this post was aimed at trying to add to that data.

I told my boss that I thought we needed to pull the links and restructure the website architecture immediately because I did not want google to remove us from their Index on my shift. His response was:

What was put in place is working. We want to do a rebuild and redesign. All of that will happen, what I want to know is:

1. When will google pull us from the index?
2. Have we already been hit?
3. Do they warn people if their website is going to be pulled.
4. Can we come back from a hit?
5. If we are pulled how quickly can we get back on google?

I will be following up shortly.

[MarieHaynes]

No worries.  I haven't labeled you as a blackhat.  In fact, my apologies, but I didn't remember that I had answered a question for you previously.

So, your questions are mostly ones that can't be answered in a general sense.  They'd require someone to know the intimate details of your penalty/algorithm demotion/technical on site issues/etc etc etc.  There's no black and white answer to any of these questions.

Google doesn't often just completely deindex a site.  Most penalties cause ranking demotions.  If you get affected by an algorithm (ie Penguin for unnatural links) then your site won't rank well until the links are cleaned up AND Penguin refreshes again.  But for algorithms your site won't get deindexed.

Google does not give warnings to say that you are going to be hit soon.

Google says that any site can recover from a penalty or algorithm change provided you fix the issues.  But you've got to have good stuff there in order to recover.  In other words, if you got a penalty or an algorithmic demotion because of unnatural links and once you've removed those links there are no natural ones there then don't expect recovery.

I've written some articles on Moz that probably answer your questions:

http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird

http://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase

http://moz.com/blog/the-difference-between-penguin-and-an-unnatural-links-penalty-and-some-info-on-panda-too