Site just will not be reincluded in Google's Index

[OzDave]

Oops sorry about that - try this link:

http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/38488/site-indexing-google-doesnt-like-it

(think other link was in 'My Questions' or something)

[OzDave]

Well the second question is the key!  But Google will not tell me despite my pleas.  Check the site for yourself - it's no masterpiece but not that bad either.

And re JC Penney - no the SEO guys I used briefly are pretty good with no problems on other sites.  Even JC Penney only got kicked down the ranks nor de-indexed.

Thanks

David

[Getz.pro]

what is the site URL

[Nemek]

Yeah, it looks like you got hit with a penalty for back-link quality. A bunch of links is from a group of domains very similar domains (link+word.info) all hosted on one IP. Probably you got slapped for link manipulation.

[OzDave]

Hmmm - yeah I see those links.  Thanks for pointing them out.

What do you think I can do about them?  I have no idea how they got there - whilst I have had an SEO work on this site I've never had a problem with any other sites they work on.

Shall I just acknowledge to Google I recognise these are crappy quality links?

Thanks again

David

[KeriMorgret]

Hi David,

Did you ever request reinclusion, and have you learned anything more about why Google is still not letting you in their index? I see the site is still not there, and wondered if you could give us an update and if there's anything more we could do to try to help.

[OzDave]

Hi Keri,

Thanks for the note - answer is no I still have no idea.  Those links that Nemek mentioned I traced back to when i bought a 'manual directory submission' service a couple of years ago.

I have actually used this service many times before for various sites to no detriment (in fact when I used the service for cookinggames.com.au it was one of 5 sites in that order -0 the other 4 were unharmed)

Anyway I confessed my sins to Google, named the submission service, explained that IU'd learnt my lesson and requested reinclusion.  Denied.

I'm at a complete loss... I've now requested reinclusion about 6 or 7 times now, each time after attending to something or other that might be the key.

I remember about 6 mths ago Matt Cutts posted a vid where he said one of the priorities at Google was going to be giving more specific feedback about things like this.  Can't come soon enough for me...

Thanks again

David

[randfish]

Hi David - there's only a few things it could be, since you've filed for re-inclusion and not gotten back in:

• On-site spam/manipulation
• Cloaking/redirect stuff
• Backlink spam

I think, like others who answered above, the third one is the most likely. This leaves you with two options - try to get all the manipulative links removed entirely (apparently, Google doesn't think as of your last re-consideration you've gone far enough) or redirect the site to a new domain and start over with SEO.

If I were in your position, I'd probably do the latter, just because even if I could clean everything up, it might take months or even years for Google to review and agree to lift those penalties.

One last thing - it's also possible that Google's keeping the site out of the index because they don't think there's enough unique value in the content. You could try making a more unique, useful site and see if that helps/works, too (I'd probably recommended this anyway for a future version).

[OzDave]

Thanks Rand - appreciate the response.

Trouble is with going the path you've described, the value is in the domain name itself.  I'd scrap the site in a heartbeat but I'm hoping to take advantage of the EMD because the search volume is massive - 2,240,000 exacts (that's why CookingGames.com sold, domain name only, for $300,000 a couple of years ago).

Regarding content - look it's about cooking games so it's quite hard to write much authoritative stuff about 'Dora is Cooking', if you know what I mean!  I already have more content than all of my competition and am reluctant to spend much more time on it if it's all in vain.

No easy answers, hey?  But thanks again all for your consideration.

Cheers

David

[KeriMorgret]

Did Google give any type of answer with denied -- like it's an automated penalty and not by hand? That's some of the feedback that they are starting, and gives at least a hint about the type of penalty.

I see you at least got picked back up in Bing, which is at least a little help.

[randfish]

I hear you - I suspect content quality could go up quite a bit with creativity, some work on the design/layout, etc. Having "more unique content" than competitors is quite a bit different than having an amazing resource that every parent wants to share with their friends because it's so phenomenal.

Re: the domain name - sadly, that might mean you need to slog through every link you've acquired and get rid of it, just to earn the clean slate Google seems to be demanding.

Good luck David!

[KeriMorgret]

FYI, I don't know if something's up with my browser (I have issues with Flash at times), but I can only seem to find one game on the site. The links page just has "page content here" as a placeholder, and there's a typo on the cooking mama games page. Those might be signals of lower quality content, but certainly nothing to get you banned.

I browsed as Googlebot via the SEOmoz toolbar and didn't see any problems.

Looks like the site had a lot of duplicated content on it in the past before you bought it. Pulling a couple of phrases off the pages of the wayback machine (http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cookinggames.com.au/*) shows hundreds or thousands of sites indexed for the same phrases. I don't see anything that looks like hacked pages on this one though.

[OzDave]

Hi again, Keri,

Thanks for all your analysis.... I think the pages you found on archive.org are the root of the problem - this was when the domain name was 'parked' at WhyPark... I think that's where Google gave it the original penalty - not fair IMO but at any rate I have confessed my sins in this regard ages ago to no avail.

Thanks for the content tips too - I'll fix them up now (there are 5 games currently on the site btw - not sure why you couldn't see them).

Thanks agin

David