Google is awesome. Some may be concerned about the power they wield and the products they offer, but they have hit homeruns with pretty much everything they do. One of the more frustrating parts in dealing with Google is knowing whether you've broken the rules or not.

The webmaster guidelines for Google are straight forward, but sometimes your site ends up in a black hole. You can ask Google if you're being held out of the index, but the only answer you get is a yes or no. They don't tell you what your site is doing that is bad or broken a rule.

I can understand Google's policy on this. They only have a limited amount of resources, so reviewing each site that is banned just isn't feasible.

Earlier this week Google announced that they will help the process if you use Google Sitemaps. Google will tell you that your site is suffering from a penalty. This eliminates the wondering, but they still won't tell you what is wrong.

It's a great first step to helping webmasters understand their site's involvement with Google.

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