There is some great news for website owners who fear they may
have been penalized by Google. Matt Cutts, the owner of this
quickly growing blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/) and
employee of Google, confirmed on his website that Google is
piloting a new program which will proactively alert website
owners of potential problems on their website.

This is definitely exciting for website owners who do not know
if they have been penalized, but it should not be taken for
something that it is not. Keep in mind the following points:

1. This is a pilot program. It is not a full fledged program
that guarantees everyone will be contacted who has been
negatively effected. Chances are, you will not be contacted at
all.

2. It is an automated program. Google will not have any one
person sending out these emails, but a bot that will have to
'discover' your email address. If it can't find one, it will
try to guess an email address. If you are good at protecting
yourself from spam, you may not get a message from Google even
if they want to contact you.

There may be a day in the not-so-far future where Google is able
to contact legitimate website owners who made an honest (or
maybe not so honest) mistake. That day is not here yet, so the
responsibility is still that of the individual website owner to
make sure they have a legitimate website in the eyes of Google.