Why Business.com Was Banned

The need to include redirect in server access files is something many webmasters and site managers can come across. Including the correct text in order to inform visitors that the page or site they are looking for has moved is a relatively easy process. However, if search engine spiders and rankings are part of your web presence concern, there a few pointers that should be considered before altering your .htaccess file. Discuss Business.com and redirects at thread started by moderator bhartzer on WebProWorld discusses this very issue, using what happened to business.com as an example. It appears as if Google penalized business.com for using the wrong type of redirect to point people away from the business.com URL to the www.business.com address. Because of their mistake, "Business.com has a PR0 on their home page and is not in Google's index anymore." b's statement can be confirmed by clicking here. For the purposes of search engines, there are two types of redirects that should be used, the "301 permanent" and the "302 temporary". Each one designates if the file the spider is looking for has been temporarily moved or if it was a permanent move. According to bhartzer, business.com was using a "HTTP/1.1302ObjectMoved redirect". The reason they were penalized was become their move was permanent and their redirect didn't reflect that. This means that when you are planning to move files on your webserver, you need to correctly inform the search engine spider where and what type of move this was. The wrong information can lead to being banned by search engines, a predicament that can be hard for a site to recover from, rankings-wise. Another moderator, jestep, reported a similar incident about a client using the wrong redirect and getting their site banned by Google: "A client of mine had a site banned. Same thing, used a 302 redirect. They had no idea, and the redirect was completely legit, but Google still saw it as spam. I've emailed Google several times, and they said they will review the site again, but the site still hasn't been readmitted into the index." By using the wrong redirect, in this case a 302, Google and others can construe this as spamming because of duplicate content issues. An article that appeared in Update: Since this thread was started, it has become one of WPW's more popular topics. Responses concerning redirects and getting banned have been coming in quite regularly. Concerning what actually happened to Business.com, SEO expert Dan Thies offered these thoughts: "Google has a problem with handling 302 redirects, period. Business.com isn't banned or penalized, they're just returning the wrong response." Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for latest search news.