The Mysterious Google Ban on Robyn’s Site

Robyn Tippins is mystified about why Google has put a ban on her site. And evidently the system Google uses to inform people that their site has been banned does not include either an indication as to the reason for the banning, or a means of finding out.

It would be much easier for site owners if your account would say ‘this is why you were banned’ when it does the check in this area. Instead it just says, ‘you’re banned, deal with it’.

In a post here the other day I suggested that it wasn’t a smart idea to try and game Google, as they have a lot of very smart people working on how to outwit the people trying to outwit them.

Robyn says she was not trying to do that and I believe her. As well as being a very experienced blogger, Robyn is a fellow-moderator on the LinkedIn Bloggers group and I know, from many interactions with her in that role, that she is not only very intelligent and well-informed, but also highly ethical and one of the most undevious people I know.

Which is also why she is not prepared to go through the charade of admitting she “done wrong”, as it appears Google wants her to do as the price of being re-included.

I decided to submit a reinclusion request, but there is no way I am agreeing (by submitting the form) that my site has in the past broken TOS, because I don’t believe that it has…

Let’s hope some responsible person at Google picks up how ridiculous this situation is and sorts it out before more bloggers take up the story and spread it further. Presumably if we type in such phrases as “Google mistake” it will no doubt show up faster on their radar.

We all make mistakes. I’ve long held the view that you can judge a company better by how it handles its mistakes than by how smoothly it operates when all is going well.

Come on, Google. Admit you goofed. And fix it, without asking Robyn to admit to something she did not do.

(Update: looks like the problem has now been identified and solved, happily with Google’s help – see Robyn’s June 11 post Now I Know Why My Blog Was Banned From Google’s Index)