Why Google Apologized to Me?

Today I want to share a personal story with you.

As you may know, Google owns bglogspot.com which provides a free (and popular) blogging service.

Last December I was shocked to note that one of my top ranking blogs, how-to-make-cash-money.blogspot.com is disabled by Google.

Google simply disabled this once #1 Ranking site on how to make cash money with social media, without any communications to me.

That was devastating!  I have spent so much time and efforts on this blog, developing it into a Google top ranking site.

Suddenly, it's gone, without any warnings.

After logging into my blog account, I then realised Google's robots have mistakenly marked this blog as a spam blog.

I immediately lodged an online request on 31 December to have my blog restored.

Then the story gets very interesting...

As Google's web message asked for my patience, and promised to notify me the outcome.

I kept waiting for over two weeks.

No news.

Then I logged into my account again.  Google seems totally forgot the previous request, and asked me to request for restoring again.  Otherwise the site will be closed forever.

That's panicking!

Then I filled out the web form again.

Another two weeks were gone.  Still nothing in the email from Google, despite that I deliberately supplied a different email address for communications with Google.

Then I logged into again.  My god, Google forgot everything again, and asked me to fill out the web form again!  Otherwise the blog would be closed for good.

I have repeated this game with Google for at least 8 times!

Three months were gone and it seemed that I would never get my case heard!

Finally on 21 March, I received an email from Google:

"Unon further review, we have determined that your blog was mistakenly marked as a TOS violator by our automated system and, as such, we have reinstated your blog.

"We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused in the meantime and thank you for your patience as we completed our review process"

Thank God, after 3 months of repetitive request, I finally have my treasured blog reinstated!

So what are the morale of this story?

1. Stand up to appeal for any injustice which may be a result of unintentional consequence;
2. Be persistent.  If I gave up half way without repetitive requests, I would have lost this blog for ever.
3. A free service can be turned off any time by its provider.  

That's why I have started building my own web site www.social-media-in-marketing.com which can't be simply turned off by Google.

Moreover, I have gained so much knowledge and experience in building a professional blogging and e-commerce web site using Wordpress.  I shared some of my insights in this blog post:

How to build a professional e-commerce site for free

This Google incident forced me to devote so much time and efforts into exploring this new alternative...  

In the end, it's so satisfying and also gives me so much comfort to have another solid web presence owned by myself.

I will record some video tutorials on how to build your own professional look site soon.

Stay tuned!

Related Post: 

Create A Website – Part 1: step by step guide on getting domain names and web hosting