Re: Victim of US/China politics, or simply bad luck?

__/ [GlobeTrekker] on Sunday 12 February 2006 06:34 \__

Hi everyone,

While I am replying to this message from Borek, I am actually asking
for help from every/anyone. Many thanks in advance. Please scroll down
and read after Borek's message. Sorry if I don't understand the
etiquette here...


I'll jump in, but be warmed as I might lack some context. I am joining this
thread only now.


Borek wrote:
On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:55:09 +0100, GlobeTrekker <SeeLaiHK@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I know. If there were any child-porn or even mention of say Tibet,
Taiwan, or Tiananmen Square posts at my site/blog, then I wouldn't be
complaining here at this group/forum. Besides, I post soft-porn
pictures of Asian (mostly Japanese) models and their pictures are all
over the Internet and other sites hosting their pictures are still
indexed and have a PR (Page Rank) of 5, 6, or above!


It now turns out that I got myself entangled with pr0nographic sites. Oh,
well... let's carry on...


Anyway, in short, the models at my site are all above 21 years old, and
no, there are no underage models. Also, I avoid obscene words like f*ck
and use alternatives like "bonk." So what gives?

And even though I do criticize Hong Kong or China politicians, I do
refrain from using the three T's - Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen at my
site. OK, I did mention Taiwan a couple of times.


I guess that words like "f*ck" /could/ more rude than "Tiananmen" to some, or
at least they justify banishment. This would seem very strange to people in
the west.


Been to your site - no idea why you get banned.

Browsed few pictures - they are as pornographic as any Playboy picture.


I haven't looked, ma!


I also doubt there is a political reason - there is a huge difference
between censoring content and not serving some queries to China and
banning sites. Google engineers are not that stupid to not understand that
CNN may quote some Chinese disidents criticizng Chinese government - and
that's not the reason to ban CNN.


Yet. The word is *yet*. Would you believe that the Chinese government bans
access to the WordPress Codex? WordPress is a blogging tool and the Codex is
a Wiki which holds documentation, often for Web developers. It's a
non-profit initiative too.


Note that my opinion is based only on the look and feel of what browser
renders, I have not looked much deeper.


As in JavaScript disabled and the like? Doorway pages are probably not the
culprit as they rarely exist. I haven't looked at the site though).


Perhaps you have accidentally triggered some of G filters? You have many
links to other blogs on your main page, perhaps they link back to you and
it was recognized as some kind of link farm or something?


Other factors might be an excess of pages or slightly hidden pages that serve
no purpose other than SEO.


Best,
Borek

All right. Here are additional details to this problem:

I managed to get in touch with a human via phone in Google's office in
US. I spoke to a lady, who actually was a receptionist, and she
listened to my problem and details with great patience and was very
kind.


That's re-assuring to hear. Did she give you an E-mail address to one of the
technical details? I hear that they occasionally do this.


She then suggested I resend my email (regarding the original complain
of why my site was banned), to another internal google email she gave
me (No, I won't disclose that email here, yet).


Ah, okay. Just as I suspected.


Well, I did resend the complain and all correspondence that has taken
place so far. That was like one week ago. Nothing. No reply, no
response, etc.


Ah, okay. Just as I suspected.


Now, I read one of the recent comments here that if there is some
problem with my site (which I am unaware of - as in 302 redirects,
etc.) and if I resubmit - reinclusion - then I am committing suicide,
as in Google wouldn't give me another chance (BTW, I have already
resubmitted my site to Google via their submit site form).


That's meaningless. Think of it as a game which involves hitting a button and
maybe copying a number for the CAPTCHA test.

If you try a reinclusion request, you might get a second chance. They do
contact the Webmasters after some nagging. Don't be reluctant to re-send a
message every now and then because it appears to make a difference, as in
most circumstances in life where a business is involved.


Therefore, I sincerely request if you could take a look at the
concerned site and see if I am (unknowingly) breaking any rules? So far
I have checked using CopyScape, etc. And I have also checked keywords,
etc.

However, I am not sure about two things:

1. My site can be accessed via multiple addresses (even though the
actual site/blog is hosted on Typepad. Here are the different
addresses:

http://www.see lai.com (CNAME redirect via register.com to the blog
address below)
http://see lai.blogs.com
http://see lai.com (A Address redirect to an IP address at Register.com
that redirects somewhere to my site with a register.com sponsored
advertisement at the bottom of the screen).
http://www.see lai.com/blog (the extra extension - blog - is added by
Typepad, as Typepad wants the user to name the blog, and in my case I
called my blog, well, "blog")


My screen is being grabbed and made public periodically, so I can't offer any
help here. Otherwise, I probably would have.


2. Some posts on my site are archived in multiple categories. For
example, the same story could be in say Category A, B, C, etc. And then
these stories are part of individual archive pages.


That's fine. It's beyond acceptable because many publishing tools work in
that way.


Well, that's about it. I am not sure if the above (either option)
creates a scenario where I am penalized for duplicate content, etc.
Otherwise, I have checked to the best of my knowledge that I am using
no spam techniques, no hidden text, etc. , and no tricks to boost my
site-rank.


I believe you. Attempt a reinclusion. The only thing going against you is the
nature of the site, which might make the engineers or reviewers less
inclined to cut some slack.


Many thanks for your advice and or suggestion in advance. I have been
sitting tight for three weeks and things seem to get nowhere.


Three weeks is not that long, relatively. Don't sit tight. Relax, unwind and
rest assured that if your site does not spam, all will eventually revert to
the old state.


One more thing. If I search Google via "site:..." command, I get
nothing for "site:www.see lai.com"


This means banishment. When you file a reinclusion request, that's the first
thing they check. It's an indicator of whether the algorithm has
automatically excluded you.


However, if I search Google using "site:see lai.blogs.com" I do get at
least 9 or sometimes 23 results from 2003! All pages indexed there are
like two and a half years go! Though the latest cached page by Google
for that result is Feb 5, 2006. What gives?


I'd call that an oddity, or datacentre misalignment, or out-of-date cache.
The above test supersedes the latter.


Once again, many thanks in advance.

Cheers!

Ron

Google ate my site! And I am sitting tight!


It could be worse, mate. The authorities sometimes ban sites based on IP
addresses. All you miss is the referral-based traffic with Google. Your site
is both alive and accessible, still.

Good luck (and remember to relax!),

Roy

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