This Planets site also has a checkered history - but not quite as bad as my van Gogh site.

I've always liked the field of astronomy and wanted to add a science site to my collection - so I focused on doing one on the planets.

I started the site around the beginning of 2006.  The first thing I did was register the domain name "www.the-planets.com".  I figured I got lucky with this name - it was perfect for the site I wanted to build (and decent domain names are hard to come by these days).

I spent about a week creating the site.  Once it was done I started emailing other astronomy sites if they wanted to exchange links and quite a few accepted.  The Houston Astronomical Society actually labeled my site as the site of the week (you can see the listing here - I am the one on 2/26/2006.

Everything was going well except for one thing - I noticed Google wasn't picking up my site.  After two weeks I started to wonder why. My sites didn't usually take longer than 10 days to get indexed by Google (and everyone who creates websites knows that if Google isn't listing you - you'll never get a good traffic flow).

Nearly two months then passed without me being indexed so I finally had to send Google a note and ask why.  They replied and said my site was banned from their search index because I was using tactics to try and fool their search engine for better page ranking.

Actually, I'm not that smart.  But after hearing this I did look up some of the things "black hat" web developers do to try and rank better in search indexes.  Needless to say I wasn't doing anything remotely like this.

I didn't figure there would be anything I could tell Google that would get them to come back to my site and review it again.  But I did discover that someone previously owned my domain name - then it dawned on me that the previous owner may have been the one doing the "black hat" tricks and once he was banned he let the domain just expire.  Unlucky for me that I had to stumble onto it and used it for my site.

I decided to close up shop on this domain and just move the pages to another location.  Ironically - Google was offering a new service called Google Pages where they let you host web sites for free.  That was perfect for me since I didn't want to waste any more money on this site - the site can now be found here: The Planets.

After moving the site, it was indexed immediately by Google which just goes to show I was honest about my site to begin with.  I was able to get most of the people I exchanged links with to switch to my new location - so that helped.

Strangely enough - the ban on my original planets domain was eventually lifted.  I'm not quite sure how that happened unless Google revisits domains every so often.  Not wanting the domain to go to waste I moved more planet information to that location as well - although I use this site now as more of a testing ground for new things.  I've even moved artist pages to this site such as Green Day, Madonna,  Britney Spears, as well as a host of more biographies.

One more note:  Google now has a tool for web masters called "Google Webmaster tools" and if you're having an issue with your site - you can contact Google there and plead your case.

My Planets sites below: