Getting A Banned Page Back Into Google After A Penalty

My link structures are usually very simple – no site map needed. Sometimes it’s easy to spot pages Google doesn’t like and decides not to index. What did I do to get a page back into the Google index after I spotted it was obviously banned / filtered / penalised?

I looked at a particular page and saw no toolbar Google PageRank, where other pages in the vicinity did have good Google PR, and after the last update more than 90% of the pages of the site had a decent PR. Indicative of a problem? Whatever the reason, the actual page wasn’t in Google when I searched for the unique title or text contained within the article.

After a month or two I thought, “what if I actually wanted that page in Google again” – How would I go about getting it re-indexed and re-included with minimum of fuss?

What was wrong with the page? The content was unique. It was clear – there were some outgoing links to some old clients’ sites and Google obviously didn’t like it – the only reason I can think of for the lack of PR. The links were in bulleted lists, only about 5, but all unrelated to this site in content. They were just company names – no anchor text fudge. I’m emphasizing that for a reason. Other pages on the site had similar content, (links to clients) but the links where embedded within the text, not conveniently separated into bullets for Google to identify.

I’m cleaning up this entire site, so;

• I removed the links and
• renamed the actual name of the page
• with a 301 from the old page name.

2 days later, back in Google at no.1 for the article title after months in the wilderness. I wonder if I overdone it, and perhaps removing the links was all that was required, or inserting them into the content instead of bullets? Anyhow, I didn’t want to wait for Google to re-spider a page under some sort of penalty, and the method above worked for me. Another page in the index. Google’s happy, I’m happy.

What I think I learned:

• Google might not like obvious links to unrelated sites, links that “looked” like paid links although it can’t really differentiate similar links when embedded in content (duh!)
• Links in bulleted lists are an obvious flag to Google?
• When it doesn’t work, fix it.
• PageRank – What it is good for.

Written by Shaun Anderson Hobo