Am I Penalized?

Hi,
I have a couple websites that dropped from the rankings in April last year. I've tried everything possible to bring them back, like new links, new content, new code, etc..
The only way you can find them in G is by searching for domain (no spaces). You can search an entire paragraph and they won't show up in the results.
However, there are some internal pages, not linked from the website at all. Those are the only pages bringing in traffic.
Because the internal pages rank, does that mean the domain is not penalized? Or should I give up and start a new domain?
Thanks

Sounds like your site is either penalized or in sandbox. If it dropped at the same time as a Panda / Penguin update then it is penalized. What you should have done since April (and should do now) is build a new site and just leave the old one for a few months (well past that now though) to recover and if no recovery then just scrap the old one altogether and concentrate on the new one. If old one did eventually recover then nothing wrong with having 2 sites ranking in thesame niche.

Fortop,

Google makes it pretty well known what tactics will get a site penalized. If you have been doing any of those things there is a good chance that the pages in violation are being excluded from search. Bestmate raises a good point. You might just want to start over on a new domain. It would probably be faster than trying to recover the old one (which you could also do while working on the new one).

SEOMoz has a pretty comprehensive list of algorithm updates and what they were designed to weed out. It could give you some ideas on what not to do the next time around,

http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

best,

Shawn

I would guess at sanboxed, as I have had sites hit, which bring nothing in off anything, pages or domain. They have been like that since about April last year too. Going to hold onto them for a bit longer, then leave them. I did however notice a site in the same niche as mine, which disappeared around about the same time. It is now on page two, I had noticed they had took out all outgoing links aff links. So yesterday, I removed all my aff links, going to see how it goes.