Do you have a domain that appears to have ranking problems in Google, Yahoo or MSN? Sometimes this may leave you wondering, “Has my Web site somehow been banned in the search engines?”; “Did my search engine optimization firm do something bad?”. If your Web site is brand new, you can skip this and just read some earlier columns on optimizing a new Web site. If your Web site once ranked and all of a sudden seems to be taking a hit, perhaps you should check to see if you’ve suffered a ban in any one of the search engines or encountered a penalty. First, let’s take a look at what a ban might look like. Oftentimes it is difficult to tell whether a domain name is banned in the search engine or simply penalized by the search engine. Or, perhaps the domain name is neither banned, nor penalized....
