35 Comments

10 Simple Ways To Get Banned By Google

July 9th, 2007 by Court

  1. Copy another site’s content. If your site is mostly duplicate content, you are risking being banned by Google. In order to make sure you get banned, don’t add any unique content at all.
  2. Use hidden text. This is a super easy method for getting banned. White text on a white background seems to be the most popular and is quite effective at getting your site blacklisted.
  3. Use hidden links. There are plenty of people that still think Google will fall for the ‘pixel link’ trick. Do you really think that Google doesn’t know that humans can’t find a link that is one square pixel?
  4. Keyword stuff like crazy. Here’s a template that you can use for more effective keyword stuffing: We sell keyword here to keyword here buyers who need keyword here information and are sick and tired of looking for keyword here.
  5. Use link farms to build links. Link farms are automatic programs that cross link between everyone that uses the program. I personally used this method to get a site banned back in 2004. I give my testimony under oath that it is a very effective method.
  6. Use cloaking. Cloaking is when you show one page to Google and a different page to your site’s visitors. If you’re interested in using this method to get banned by Google there are plenty of programs you can use to get started. Do a search for ‘website cloaking’ and you’ll have plenty of options that will probably get you banned.
  7. Have a scraper write the content for your site. Scrapers are programs that ’scrape’ the internet for content, publishing them on your site. They usually use search engine results and RSS feeds to get content. Since none of the content will be unique, you will get banned.
  8. Link to bad neighborhoods. If you want to get banned, make sure that you link to plenty of sites that don’t provide quality to your readers. Link to lots of sites that have already been banned by Google. That’s usually enough to get you banned.
  9. Distribute viruses. Everyone likes a good virus, including Google.
  10. Send spam from your domain. To effectively get banned make sure you don’t send your mass emails from a third party server, send them from your own domain server. That makes it easier for Google to track the spam back to you.

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35 comments! »

Comment by andy
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July 9th, 2007 at 10:48 am

I almost used ‘cloaking’ before I knew that it was against google policy. It’s a good thing that I didn’t. :)

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 7:36 pm

I haven’t ever tried it, but I have to admit that I looked into it quite a few times before deciding against it. :)

 
 
Comment by Michael Subscribed to comments via email
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July 9th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

This is a good list your provided Court. I was not familiar with these techniques, but now that I am I know to stay away from them.

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 7:37 pm

Thanks Mike~! Sometimes the most important thing is knowing what not to do. I definitely think this is the case here. If you do the wrong things, your business could be over before it gets started.

 
 
Comment by V. Neely
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July 9th, 2007 at 12:47 pm

I didn’t realize there were so many creative ways to get banned by Google!

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

Yeah, it really isn’t that difficult if your mind to it, hahahaha.

 
 
Comment by David Subscribed to comments via email
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July 9th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

There goes my new plan for building a web site that automatically scraped banned sites for contents, and then linked back to them with only 1pixel wide white dots on a white background. ;-)

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

Haha someone should try it as an experiment just to see how long it lasts before Google bans it. :)

 
 
Comment by Dan
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July 9th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

Confession time! How many of us have tried some of these techniques and proven their effectiveness at causing problems? I know I have!

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 7:43 pm

Lol I sure have! Some of them I tried a few different times. I’m going to stay away from here on out though, it wasn’t worth it at all.

 
 
Comment by Tay
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July 9th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

Fantastic post, Court. I loved it! I’ll make sure never to do any of these things. :lol:

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

Thanks Tay! I’m glad that I was able to get a few sites banned so that you don’t have to. :)

 
 
Comment by JennyHow
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July 9th, 2007 at 9:16 pm

i didn’t know no.2 was an offense. i thought of doing that for my header as i’d like to have a graphic header with my blog name.

but fortunately, i have not done it yet.

Comment by Court
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July 9th, 2007 at 10:04 pm

That’s good Jenny! You can use a graphic header with your blog name as the alt tag, that would be better.

Comment by Angie Subscribed to comments via email
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July 12th, 2007 at 11:46 pm

I did that exact thing on one of my sites and received a 30 page penalty! When I finally figured it out and removed it, things were back to normal for my ranking in about three months.

 
 
 
Comment by Martin Subscribed to comments via email
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July 10th, 2007 at 3:20 am

A lot of top black hat people make thousands each month from cloaking pages and other black hat sites. I must admit it is tempting to try see how much you can make. You may only get a short time before you get banned but the rewards can be great. I wonder what top black hat people are doing that no one knows about yet.

 
Comment by SELaplana Subscribed to comments via email
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July 11th, 2007 at 4:14 am

of all tips i read this is the easiest so far. maybe we can try this one hehehe

 
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July 12th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

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July 13th, 2007 at 11:53 pm

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Comment by Loisel
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July 15th, 2007 at 9:16 am

I visit many blog site but most of them refer this site. nice post. keep it up

 
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July 18th, 2007 at 3:13 am

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July 24th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

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Comment by Paid Surveys Subscribed to comments via email
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July 25th, 2007 at 10:20 am

Thankfully I don’t participate in any of the above methods, was always worried about getting penalised by Google but luckily I should be okay.

 
Comment by Snoskred Subscribed to comments via email
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July 29th, 2007 at 4:08 am

I added a link to this post to my weekly wrap up today, just so you know. :)

Snoskred
http://www.snoskred.org/

 
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August 4th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

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August 30th, 2007 at 4:04 pm

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Comment by Ryan Bunting Subscribed to comments via email
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September 8th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

Excellent list, I was very close to using the link farm that you did, thanks for letting me learn from your mistake! I’m glad that you’ve chosen to be such an honest person, which is hard to find on the internet!

 
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October 1st, 2007 at 12:05 pm

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October 8th, 2007 at 5:09 pm

Web Site Design

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October 10th, 2007 at 11:56 am

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Comment by Wooden Pete
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January 16th, 2008 at 11:24 am

I got hammered using a link farm in my innoncence. We all live and learn!

 
Comment by Wayne
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February 16th, 2008 at 12:24 am

You missed one of the most common reasons..

11. Don’t get too popular too fast..

That’s right.. If you get too popular too fast, like you hit the front page of digg or something and get a ton of hits..

This is particularly true if you have google ads running and you go from just a few clicks to a lot of click all at once.

Do you have a Google Horror Story? Post it at

 
Comment by mike
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March 18th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

is google adsense allowed to promote site at yahoo group?

 
Comment by СЕО
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April 26th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

My blog banned too///

 

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