Google to start warning legitimate sites before a listing ban
In response to popular request Google is looking to warn webmasters of an impending ban. Matt Cutts, the engineer responsible for the quality of Google's search algorithm is working on improving communication with webmasters to avoid banning of legitimate sites. The project works with the google sitemaps facility .
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Notifying webmasters of penalties
One of the biggest complaints from legitimate sites is Google's no-warning uni-lateral elimination from their results. Most business web sites with significant activity on their web site have fallen foul of this at one time or other, in spite following an ethical marketing methods. The most frequent cause in my experience with clients are old caches of content dating over a year that Google takes issue with. Google states the zero-warning policy is essential against their war against spammers. Giving spammers any tips on impending action gives the spammers too much of an advantage. A solution is at hand however from the creators of the google sitemap project. As stated by Mark
The Webspam team and the Sitemaps team have been working together for several months on a new approach: we are now alerting some sites that they have penalties via the webmaster console in Sitemaps. For example, if you verify your site in Sitemaps and then are penalized by the webspam team for hidden text on your pages, we may explicitly confirm a penalty and offer you a reinclusion request specifically for that site.
Now at last, Google has come up with a compelling reason to join the sitemap program. A heads up from Google on any impending listing problems for your web site is a real plus.
