Google Reinclusion Request

There’s been a bit of controversy lately regarding the Google Reinclusion Request that webmasters have to send in to Google if you’ve been mysteriously dropped from their index. Many people are complaining that they don’t know why they’ve been removed from the index and that by sending in the request, Google is forcing you to admit that you did something wrong. My take on this…. so what? Chances are, whether you know it or not, you did do something wrong if Google removed you from their index. It might be that you were linking to people that are spammy, it might be that you’re over-SEO’ed, or it might be hidden text on your page that you don’t even know about. (Trust me on this one, this happened to me recently but luckily I found it before Google spidered the page – I had a cell bgcolor set to #ffffff, a cell background IMAGE that was a gradient, and cell text color that was #ffffff – see what I mean how easy it is to make an honest mistake?) My point behind all of this? Spend a few hours, search through your code with a fine tooth comb, and find out what is wrong, or at least what you THINK is wrong. Correct it, then tell Google what you did to fix what you think is your problem and request to be reincluded in their index. As much as people moan and complain about their SERPs fluctuating all over the place, the -30 penalty, the -950 penalty, whatever, Google doesn’t just remove your site from their index for no reason. There’s an old saying that applies here… Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.