Comments on: Google’s Matt Cutts Offers Feedback on Banned Site

By: laizeps reesnreget

laizeps reesnreget — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:07:29 +0000

just for the record: matt cutts stinks.

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:58:29 +0000

And it’s not just penalties and bans that should be dealt with, but other types of problems as well. For instance, I recently had a site lose all its rankings because of a canonical issue (one link pointing index.cfm instead of the root). Luckily, I was able to figure out that this was the problem, find the link, and fix it. It still took several weeks for Google to return my rankings, however. If I were an ordinary webmaster, and not aware of canonical issues, I might never have caught this. Webmaster Console didn’t tell me. I didn’t receive any emails. Clearly, this is the kind of thing that would benefit webmasters, since it obviously has nothing to do with spamming or intentional shenanigans.

By: Peter Davis

Peter Davis — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:52:07 +0000

Did you expect anything different than that from Matt?

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:49:37 +0000

You’re right Peter, no way to tell. Although even in Matt’s example, he used a site where the site owner didn’t know.

By: Peter Davis

Peter Davis — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:01:09 +0000

I would argue more that why should Google expend the effort rather than if it would be telling them something they didn’t already know. And, I do doubt that what you say about the “majority” of sites getting kicked out had no clue. No way either of us could prove either way, so no sense arguing that.

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:55:56 +0000

If the blackhats know they’re playing with fire, they’ll have an understanding already of what they did that got them booted. Alerting them, won’t change that.

It’s like those people that get concerned with CNN explains how a terrorist could build a bomb – some people freak out that CNN just gave the terrosist a blueprint – but the terrorists already know how to do it.

The vast majority of sites that are kicked-out, never had a clue they were doing something that was a no-no. Remember, not everyone knows what Google’s guidelines are.

By: Peter Davis

Peter Davis — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:17:51 +0000

Why should they notify EVERY webmaster? I think that in many cases where they ban a site, it’s obvious that the webmaster knew exactly what they were doing and understood the risk involved. Why would Google bother sending notices to the hardcore blackhats?