Irwin Mitchell has resolved its search engine problem with Google after its main website was de-listed from the main rankings earlier this year.

The de-listing, which was a source of significant embarrassment for the firm, meant that irwinmitchell.com did not come up in organic search results.

In January, when news of the suspected de-listing first broke, search engine optimisation (SEO) specialists told Legal Week that Google occasionally penalises websites it suspects to have paid other sites to host linked content or to have placed links to its website on other pages.

Yesterday, Irwin Mitchell confirmed to Legal Week it had successfully petitioned Google to reinstate its website in the rankings, following a review of the search issues.

In a statement a firm spokesperson said: "Since late January, a multi-disciplinary team at Irwin Mitchell as well as external specialists have been working to quickly resolve the natural search issues identified by Google on irwinmitchell.com.

"There is still ongoing work taking place but we are extremely pleased that within a three week period we were able to submit a request to Google asking it to re-evaluate its position.

"Following this review, Google informed the firm that it was revoking its action and since then we have seen irwinmitchell.com rankings return."

Websites tend to be de-listed by Google if the search engine does not trust the reliability of links to the site, or if the search engine finds "unnatural" incoming links.

Normally, the greater the quality of the websites that link to a domain, the higher Google raises the profile of that domain in its search results.