It still comes down to the legalities. If Google receive a complaint, and it appears justifiable, then it is acted upon in "good faith". There is a document trail which is admissible as proof.
If a googlebot, on the other hand, automatically bans a site for what it thinks is wrong. Then Google are solely responsible, and could be deemed as acting upon impulse rather than on due consideration. A point lawyers would love to take to court. But again this is only opinion. Maybe the question should've been "Have you heard of a site banned, barred or blacklisted without a complaint?" regards mike 2k:)2 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Mike Foskett Web Standards, Accessibility & Testing Consultant Multimedia Publishing and Production British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) Milburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry CV4 7JJ Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 02476 416994 Ext 3342 [Tuesday - Thursday] Fax: 02476 411410 www.becta.org.uk ____________________________________________________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: Kay Smoljak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 31 March 2005 12:50 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WSG] Hidden Content On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:46:23 +0100, Mike Foskett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't actually believe that CSS styling will make any difference to > search engine ranking. These robots spend enough time trawling through > the HTML content. It would be time wasted to cross reference the > content against: visibility, display, colours used, z-index and > positioning. You can see what search engines request by looking at your log files. They've never requested my css files. However, I read somewhere a Google staff member said something like "we reserve the right to index css files or not" which means they may start in the future. > Does anyone actually know of a page barred, blacklisted or banned by > Google? I somehow doubt they ever do. They do ban sites - it happened to one of my clients (although nothing to do with css) and it took about eight months of campaigning to get the site included again. However, the biggest risk is your competitors - if I see a site spamming a search engine I report it. Many people do the same, and there *have* been cases of the engines taking action. -- Kay Smoljak http://kay.smoljak.com/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ****************************************************** ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com ********************************************************************** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
