undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Why is my website banned?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Why is my website banned?

Technical SEO
6
12
2.6k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • tadden
    tadden last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 2:56 PM

    IMy website is Costume Machine at www.costumemachine.com . My site has been banned for 1 year now. I have requested that google reconsider my site 3 times without luck.

    The site is dynamic and basically pulls in feeds from affiliate sites. We have added over 1,500 pages of original content. The site has been running great since 2008 without any penalties. I don't think I got hit with any linking penalty. I cleaned up all questionable links last November when the penalty hit.

    Am I being hit with a "thin" site penalty? If that is the issue what is the best way to fix the problem?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • tadden
      tadden @irvingw last edited by Oct 17, 2011, 12:21 PM Oct 17, 2011, 12:21 PM

      I recieved this Google reply to my latest reconsideration request. Maybe you can gather some insight from their resonse. I'm trying to decide if its a content issue or a linking issue google is taking exception to with my site. Any insight would be appreciated.

      Thanks,

      Todd

      Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.costumemachine.com/,

      We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.costumemachine.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

      We've reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines.

      In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from http://www.costumemachine.com/ may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google's search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines.

      If you wish to be reconsidered again, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en and resubmit your site for reconsideration.

      If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

      Sincerely,

      Google Search Quality

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,11 days
      • AlanMosley
        AlanMosley @GrouchyKids last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 11:02 PM Oct 6, 2011, 11:02 PM

        I believe they report when you have malwae or been hacked, but not when uyou have been flaged

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • KeriMorgret
          KeriMorgret last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 9:59 PM Oct 6, 2011, 9:59 PM

          When I go to google and search [costumemachine.com] your site is the first result and it has six sitelinks.

          When you are looking at your metrics for the last year and comparing it to times prior, what is it that you see has changed? Are you doing OK in organic Bing and Yahoo and just having problems with Google?

          That said, I'm having a very hard time finding 15 pages of original content, much less 1,500 pages of original content. Like others have mentioned, the tags and filters seem to be off. When I'm looking at 1st Birthday Costumes, the list of other 1st birthday costumes includes a hot dog adult link, as well as links that have no results (covenant slayer faith). Correction: now that I look more carefully at the page, it says nothing found for 1st birthday party theme, even though I clicked a link there, so it's just showing me random stuff for adults.

          Like the others mentioned, I'm having a hard time seeing the value of this site to a user. Google wants people to have a good experience when a user finds a site, and there are other sites in this area that do a better job.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • gfiorelli1
            gfiorelli1 last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 6:27 PM Oct 6, 2011, 6:25 PM

            Hi Todd,

            IMO you're intuition is right and Irving is saying a correct thing in the first point.

            I too have noticed that you have pagination issues and that all the paginated urls have the same title html, substantially the same content. I suggest you to not let SE to index the paginated pages using "meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow". That way you will resolve a good number of duplication issues.

            About thin content... yes, the content describing the categories and sub categories would not win the Pulitzer. Try to be more original and apply the content curation practice in order craft exceptional category description.

            One thing I don't like of your site - without offence - is the fact that it is clearly an affiliate site: to click on a product and find myself directly sent to product page on the real site is not really giving me a great impression. Therefore, and you have nothing to loose after a 1 year buried in the serps, I would start reconsidering an integral re-definition of the site.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • irvingw
              irvingw @tadden last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 5:14 PM Oct 6, 2011, 5:14 PM

              How many times did you submit for reconsideration? When was the last time, did you give specific examples of what you fixed?

              I assume most of the link building was done to your homepage? If so, download all links pointing to your homepage with GWMT and use this tool to go through them one at a time.

              http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm

              a) If you see a site that looks shady reach out to the webmaster and tell him you need the site removed. Keep a record so you can follow up. Shady means links to adult, casino and med sites.

              b) Remove any sitewide links pointing to your site

              c) remove any sites linking to you that are penalized in Google

              Time consuming process, but as you make progress you can submit reconsideration requests periodically explaining what steps you are taking to come back into compliance. Admit that you were link building and that you fired your SEO guy right away. Explain the steps you are taking to reverse the damage he did and how it really affected your business. Promise to not engage in link building again - be humble and appreciative.

              Sometimes you need to fix and fix and submit 4 or 5 times before Google releases the penalty.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • tadden
                tadden @irvingw last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 4:16 PM Oct 6, 2011, 4:16 PM

                I know the timing for this site is horrible. I am interested in your help if you can help me identify the exact cause of the penalty. If it is a link penalty I'd like to be able to pinpoint the link or links Google dislikes and fix them.

                irvingw 1 Reply Last reply Oct 6, 2011, 5:14 PM Reply Quote 0
                • tadden
                  tadden @GrouchyKids last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 4:14 PM Oct 6, 2011, 4:14 PM

                  I have check Google Webmaster and I can't find anything that tells me why I'm being penalized. If you know exactly where please let me know.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • irvingw
                    irvingw last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 4:17 PM Oct 6, 2011, 3:59 PM

                    1. Duplicate content is not a penalty, but a filter so Google could theoretically let only one of these pages rank:

                    http://www.costumemachine.com/costume/adult-costumes/sexy/1

                    all the way to 113 are very similar

                    http://www.costumemachine.com/costume/adult-costumes/sexy/113

                    1. How is santa getting classifies as a Jew costume lol

                    http://www.costumemachine.com/keyword/jew/1

                    1. It's not really a "search engine on more than 20 costume sites" is it, more like a affiliate site for buycostumes.com - just a personal observation, has nothing to do with penalty 😉

                    Anyway, having flimsy content is not something that would get you a trademark suppression so my guess is that these is still something with your incoming links that Google doesn't like. Were you ranking well before? Sucks, this is your time of the year I could have helped you possibly recover if you reached out a few months ago.

                    tadden 2 Replies Last reply Oct 17, 2011, 12:21 PM Reply Quote 1
                    • irvingw
                      irvingw @AlanMosley last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 4:17 PM Oct 6, 2011, 3:34 PM

                      Correct, the site is not banned but it IS penalized. Banned means completely removed from Google's index...game over. Penalized means indexed but rankings have been suppressed.

                      As you can see your name is not ranking when searching Google, this is a trademark suppression and almost always means the entire site has been penalized.

                      http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.costumemachine.com&hl=en&prmd=imvns&ei=OPCNTraCNI-HrAeCh8SmAQ&start=30&sa=N&biw=1920&bih=888&cad=cbv&sei=DvSNTsybHMbYrQeuvcijAQ#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=888&source=hp&q="costumemachine"&pbx=1&oq="costumemachine"&aq=f&aqi=g-l2g-v1g-lv1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=3619l6784l0l7009l16l13l0l0l0l0l621l4828l2-2.5.2.3l12l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=334e87e3bc984f2f

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • GrouchyKids
                        GrouchyKids last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 3:20 PM Oct 6, 2011, 3:20 PM

                        Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools, they now report penalisation I believe.

                        tadden AlanMosley 2 Replies Last reply Oct 6, 2011, 11:02 PM Reply Quote 0
                        • AlanMosley
                          AlanMosley last edited by Oct 6, 2011, 3:11 PM Oct 6, 2011, 3:11 PM

                          I just checked and you are in both bing and google

                          irvingw 1 Reply Last reply Oct 6, 2011, 3:34 PM Reply Quote 0
                          • 1 / 1
                          1 out of 12
                          • First post
                            1/12
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          Browse Questions

                          Explore more categories

                          • Moz Tools

                            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                          • SEO Tactics

                            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                          • Community

                            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                          • Digital Marketing

                            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                          • Research & Trends

                            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                          • Support

                            Connect on product support and feature requests.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • Dan_Tala

                            My website is constantly decreasing

                            loss of ranking

                            For few weeks ago my website is constantly decreasing in search position. I lost keywords and is gooooing down.
                            Although it is well rated on several on page and off page seo verification software that I have tried.
                            I checked Google search console and Analytics and found no major problems. However… from one day to another it keeps going down.
                            I also checked what the main competitors are doing and they are not doing well, at all.
                            The main competitor actually has a creepy website. Totally devoid of onpage or offpage SEO but with an enormous number of backlinks. And of a very bad quality, which should disqualify it, still…
                            Few weeks ago I changed something.
                            In the pages I had H1, 4xH2, no H3 and an H4 without content.
                            An unnatural H tag structure.
                            Now I have H1, H2, H3, 3xH4, with the coherent information.
                            Theoretically, Google should have been “happy” or I’m missing something. I use a SAAS platform.
                            I just found out that they made changes to the keywords (tags).
                            I am selling toner cartridges for printers.
                            So…
                            The tags are printer models and generate a url in which they have the products.
                            Ex. https://www.sertit.ro/cartus-imprimanta-cilindru-color-hp-laserjet-pro-m-177fw goes to the products for that printer model.
                            The question is… should I make tag canonical?
                            Is it possible for products to loose so much in Google search?

                            Technical SEO | Feb 17, 2024, 7:35 AM | Dan_Tala
                            0
                          • Jane.com

                            Will Google crawl and rank our ReactJS website content?

                            We have 250+ products dynamically inserted and sorted on our site daily (more specifically our homepage... yes, it's a long page). Our dev team would like to explore rendering the page server-side using ReactJS. We currently use a CDN to cache all the content, which of course we would like to continue using. SO... will Google be able to crawl that content? We've read some articles with different ideas (including prerendering): http://andrewhfarmer.com/react-seo/
                            http://www.seoskeptic.com/json-ld-big-day-at-google/ If we were to only load the schema important to the page  (like product title, image, price, description, etc.) from the server and then let the client render the remaining content (comments, suggested products, etc.), would that go against best practices? It seems like that might be seen as showing the googlebot 1 version and showing the site visitor a different (more complete) version.

                            Technical SEO | May 24, 2016, 8:33 AM | Jane.com
                            0
                          • nlogix

                            How preproduction website is getting indexed in Google.

                            Hi team, Can anybody please help me to find how my preproduction website and urls are  getting indexed in Google.

                            Technical SEO | May 18, 2016, 2:29 PM | nlogix
                            0
                          • DutchG

                            Removed Product page on our website, what to do

                            We just removed an entire product category on our website, (product pages still exist, but will be removed soon as well) Should we be setting up re-directs, or can we simply delete this category and product 
                            pages and do nothing? We just received this in Google Webmasters tools: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. We have not updated the sitemap yet...Would this be enough to do or should we do more? You can view our website here: http://tinyurl.com/6la8 We removed the entire "Spring Planted Category"

                            Technical SEO | May 16, 2015, 3:42 AM | DutchG
                            0
                          • ReviveMedia

                            What can I do to stop ranking for a keyword that has nothing to do with the companies website?

                            A website that we maintain keeps ranking for the keyword 'homeless shelter'.  The company is UTILIS USA and they produce heavy duty shelters for military personnel.  They have nothing to do with homeless shelters but continue to receive traffic concerning the phrase.

                            Technical SEO | May 20, 2014, 10:05 PM | ReviveMedia
                            0
                          • thinkcreativegroup

                            Is pointing multiple domains to a single website beneficial for SEO or not?

                            A client has purchased many domains with keywords in each. They want to have us point each domain to their site for better SEO.  Is this a good or bad thing to do?

                            Technical SEO | Mar 27, 2017, 11:37 PM | thinkcreativegroup
                            0
                          • csmm

                            Fixing a website redirect situation that resulted in drop in traffic

                            Hi, I'm trying to help someone fix the following situation: they had a website, www.domain.com, that was generating a steady amount of traffic for three years. They then redesigned the website a couple of months ago, and the website developer redirected the site to domain.com but did not set up analytics on domain.com. We noticed that there was a drop in traffic to www.domain.com but have no idea if domain.com is generating any traffic since analytics wasn't installed. To fix this situation, I was going to find out from the developer if there was a good reason to redirect the site. What would have prompted the developer to do this if www.domain.com had been used already for three years? Then, unless there was a good reason, I would change the redirect back to what it was before - domain.com redirecting to www.domain.com. Presumably this would allow us to regain the traffic to the site www.domain.com that was lost when the redirect was put in place. Does this sound like a reasonable course of action? Is there anything that I'm missing, or anything else that I should do in this situation? Thanks in advance! Carolina

                            Technical SEO | Dec 12, 2012, 1:10 AM | csmm
                            0
                          • suskanchan

                            How to SEO a Website Built off Godaddy?

                            I have a client whose website is built off Godaddy services. I know Godaddy is not the right choice for building a website, but what's done is done. The client has already bought the Godaddy services and there's no way I can tell him to go rebuild his website before we could optimize it for SEO. I'm already facing a lot of challenges while optimizing on-page elements. When I wanted to verify the ownership for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tool via his Godaddy account. the process failed many times. it looks like Godaddy is using some kind of caching not allowing us to modify the codes. For example, I'd applied the site verification codes for Webmasters Tool 48 hours ago, and the metatag for google site verification is not yet updated in the frontend. It's quite frustrating. What would you suggest?

                            Technical SEO | Jul 18, 2012, 10:26 AM | suskanchan
                            1

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.