how long does a google penalty last?

[giveasyouget]

Just wondering how long a google penalty lasts - I'm currently at PR0, somewhere I really don't want to be, espcially when I have several PR8 links. When google came to call on the 8th september my site had a few things that would **** it off - namely giveasyouget.net and giveasu creating a clone of the site rather than redirecting to one another.

I tried to fix it whilst away, changing the redirect thing in my dns provider's control panel only to realise that since i'd set the a/cname records elsewhere it had no effect until I got home and changed the a/cname back to the dns provider's ip.

Now what i'd like to know is - I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a google penalty lasts 30 days.. now is this 30 days from when it found the issue with your site (giving me 2 weeks to get a real PR) or from when the issue was resolved - last wednesday?

Also, poking about my site is there anything else you would consider worthy of a google penalty or do you think i've fixed them all now?

http://www.giveasyouget.net/

oooh and one more thing - i paid for a submission to inktomi through positiontech and all i can see now on msn is my top level domain under 'directory sites' .. i was in Zeal before though, is inktomi going to come and spider or have i really just paid for a directory listing?

Many thanks,

Jonny

[Wardy]

If Google only came to visit onn the 8th September then I wouldn't worry too much really. New sites have the white bar when google first comes round untill it has calculated what it's actually worth.

As for how long penaltys last, I know of a number of sites that were given a year when they were penalised (but I wouldn't think you need to worry that you are yet anyway).

Cheers
Wardy

[giveasyouget]

that's a relief, i must say.. thought i'd really ****ed google off ..

just two things i've read that orginally concerned me:

new sites get PR4 (is this true or false?)

and that using Header ("location: http://www.giveasyouget.net"); in php ends up giving the page ur redirected to a PR0 ...
hmmm read a thread on it on webmasterworld which I can't find anymore where a user had good pr for the rest of the site but those that had had a header redirect to kept pr0 long after the redirecting pages had vanished..

[Fraser]

new sites don't get 4/10, you can start at anything.

Seems odd about header redirects, to me it seems quite a reasonable thing to do if you move pages around so it would be pretty tough of google to punish that. Can never be sure of anything though!

[giveasyouget]

happily enough i've woken up this morning to find i have pr 4 although since i have quite a few pr 6 and 7 links i was hoping for better, but it's better than 0! :P
done a bit more optimisation of my shops tho i have no clue if itll make a difference.. i hate the way everything u read about how to optimise your sites for search engines changes so fast that u read something else a week later suggesting it's just not done any more!

are alt tags still an acceptable way to beef up your keyword density?

[SillyJokes]

alt tags on images are very important for people with disabilities, also they can help people without disabilities.

In both cases they can add value and interest in your website, making it better to visit.

Always use them regardless of google.

In any case what google wants is to deliver the results people are searching for therefore I would advise you to fill your site with useful content which is easy to navigate.

Afterall, you can go to a lot of effort to get them to come to your site, but will they stay and will they return? Only if you have what they want.

[Ecco]

i hate the way everything u read about how to optimise your sites for search engines changes so fast that u read something else a week later suggesting it's just not done any more!

If it was easy, we'd all be out of a job

Also SillyJokes has a very valid point on accessibility for the disabled, as reader software for blind people is reliant on good alt tagging... doesn't stop you making it keyword friendly too though