How can I tell if my site was penalized from the most recent penguin update?
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Hey all,
I want to be able to see if my website was penalized from the most recent penguin update because we have several hundred websites built and at the bottom of each on it says something along the lines Website by, Web Design by, Hosting by and links back to our homepage.
Could this possibly be penalizing us since these links have similar anchor text and on sites that have nothing to do with our services?
Thanks,
Ryan
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Hi,
First of all you need to assess your link profile and if you do have a large amount of spammy and over optimized anchor text links then you are a candidate for Penguin. If not, you need to look elsewhere.
You first need to check your Google Analytics (organic traffic) and a organic visibility graph for your site ("general ranking graphic" using a tool like sistrix or search metrics).
if you don't have access to sistrix or search metrics or any other visibility tool just post the url he rte and me or someone else will run the url for you.
In google analytics and in any of the visibility tools you need to look for a sudden drop in and short after the bellow dates (when Penguin was released):
October 5, 2012
May 25, 2012
April 24, 2012
If you have a spammy link profile and your organic traffic dropped and is corelated with loss of rankings in the same day then chances are high that you are under this Penguin filter.
Hope it helps.
Cheers.
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The best way to tell is look at your analytics. Have you noticed a drop that coincides with an algorithm update?
This is always a great way to see what updates have happened and when:
http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
Andy
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