Google Penalty?
-
What are the characteristics of a Google penalty - i.e. how do you know by looking at the rankings for your keywords?
Do all keywords that you had previously ranked for fall from say top 5 to nowhere?
Do you disappear from SERP for a branded keyword?
Or something else??
Basically how do you know if you have been penalized?
Thanks
-
If you have a site that has been matched with a brand then Google will rarely remove your site entirely from the index. Take JC Penny for example. They didn't suffer any rankings for the term JC Penny. They suffered rankings for other terms that they had been building bad links for. Monitoring your keyword rankings and noticing large drops in positions on a per keyword base might give you a better idea if you have been hit with a penalty.
-
Verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools, and see if there is a notice from Google there. They will sometimes notify you if you have a penalty. If you are completely out of the index, you can file a reinclusion request in GWT as well.
If you want to put your URL here, the community can take a look and see what they can find that may help answer your question, if it is not purely a hypothetical question.
-
Do a search for site:mydomain.com in Google. If nothing comes up, you have been given the stiffest penalty out there, complete removal from the index.
Try a google search for just your brand name. Are you in the top ten? If not, you are probably being penalized.
Go to your Google analytics. Look at traffic sources and just go to the Google data. Has there been a steep decline somewhere in traffic from Google? You probably have a penalty.
Look at your website content. Do you have hidden text the same color as the background? Do you link out to spammy viagra and gambling sites? Do you have more than 500 links on one page? Is your site keyword gibberish that doesn't even make grammatical sense? Is your keyword bolded every time? Then if you don't yet have a penalty, you probably will soon.
Look at your backlinks to your website. Have you paid for any of those links? Do you exclusively have reciprocal links? Do all your links come from spammy sites? Do all your links have identical anchor text? Do all your links only go to your homepage? Do all your links come from the same c-block? Then if you don't yet have a penalty, your probably will soon.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Fixing Index Errors in the new Google Search Console - Help
Hi, So I have started using the new Search Console and for one of my clients, there are a few 'Index Coverage Errors'. In the old version you could simply, analyse, test and then mark any URLs as fixed - does anyone know if that is possible in the new version? There are options to validate errors but no 'mark as fixed' options. Do you need to validate the errors before you can fix them?
On-Page Optimization | | daniel-brooks0 -
Google rankings
I have encountered a serious problem with google rankings and the sequence of events goes like this for a high volume phrase. I make changes to the page which gets a score of 98 in Moz and equally good scores in other tools. I resubmit the page to Google for searching via crawl in google webmasters. After about 1/2 to 1 day, the page will be ranked between 30 and 50. Within another 1/2 to 1 day, the ranking goes completely away. This page has much higher scores than pages that are ranked. Other phrases continue to rank OK.
On-Page Optimization | | tiedyedshop0 -
Using Google structured Data for SEO benefit
Hi there I run www.isacleanse.com.au and I've set up some Structured data using Google Webmaster Tools which says it will be picked up during the next Google update (has been set up over 4 weeks ago), however I dont seem to see any of the structured data for the products/reviews/ratings etc coming through in search results. Question at hand: Is there additional things I need to do in the code of the website or should this be sufficient? (see attached screenshot) szpFUpX
On-Page Optimization | | IsaCleanse1 -
Getting different search queries in Google Webmaster
Hi All, I have a website Afrofood.com. In it's Google webmaster search queries i have more than 90 Queries, but not a single query is related with this site. All queries are from different site or subject, they have no any relation with my site. Can any one please tell me how to correct this... Site is Afrofood.com related with African foods, recipes, spices and all that. But showing search queries are: [canada goose](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose) [canada goose outlet deutschland](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose outlet deutschland) [polizei shop düsseldorf](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#polizei shop düsseldorf) [canada goose deutschland](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose deutschland) [canada goose weste](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose weste) [canada goose kaufen](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose kaufen) [canada goose hamburg](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose hamburg) [canada goose größentabelle](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose größentabelle)
On-Page Optimization | | 1akal0 -
How to Fix Google Webmasters Soft 404 Errors for Wordpress Site?
I am getting Soft 404 errors in my Google Webmasters Tools don't know how to fix it the site in on WordPress CMS the site is "http://appdictions.com/" i am getting errors in the http://appdictions.com/members section...suggestion to fix the issue will be appreciated..
On-Page Optimization | | preferati0 -
I have more pages in my site map being blocked by the robot file than I have being allowed to be crawled. Is Google going to hate me for this?
Using some rules to block all pages which start with "copy-of" on my website because people have a bad habit of duplicating new product listings to create our refurbished, surplus etc. listings for those products. To avoid Google seeing these as duplicate pages I've blocked them in the robot file, but of course they are still automatically generated in our sitemap. How bad is this?
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Can't canonical, but need pages to show in Google News
We are a news media site in which much of our content is third-party, and already published by several other sources. Our current version of our CMS doesn't expose head tags, so I can't canonical to the original and avoid a duplicate content penalty. Is it ok for news sites NOT to use canonical, or do I have to NOINDEX until our CMS is fixed?
On-Page Optimization | | Aggie0 -
Stumped on why Google is not showing main site pages anymore
Recently had sites homepage listing taken off first page for brand name search even though search term is not competitive. Does anyone have any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | Luia0