What to Do if Your Site Has a Penalty or Ban - Checking Your Links
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Now that we have determined it is not a technical issue with your website, we can concentrate on other issues that might have caused your site to drop or disappear. You may notice that your link development isn't quite where it should be. If you linked out to some less than scrupulous websites, chances are that the search engines have banned those sites, and any links from them to you. Less links pointing at your website means lower rankings.
Counting On Your Index
Another step to discover if your site is banned or not is to check your web site's index count. An index count, simply put, is the number of your URLs listed in a given search site's index.
To obtain your index count on Microsoft Live, Google, and Ask, go to the respective search page and type in: site:nameofyourwebsite.com. For instance, if I wanted to check Developer Shed's count, I would type in:
site:www.developershed.com.
For Yahoo, you can use their Site Explorer tool or simply type in your domain in the search engine: http://www.devshed.com
If your web site's index count has fallen, then you have a definite problem. If you have checked all of the technical possibilities and everything seems in order, then your site has probably been banned or penalized.
Next: Obey the Rules >>
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