How to Diagnose the Reason of Google Penalty
So you’ve built a site and started to see some Google traffic and feel happy. And then one day comes when you wake up in the morning and find your site penalized (here are some ways to find out if you are penalized). A nightmare… But life goes on and you have two choices: either you give up and start from scratch or you try to give that old site new life.
One way to make Google re-evaluate and re-install your site is to file the reconsideration request. But before doing that you need to be sure the site is absolutely clean. So here are the steps to make sure your site is ready to get back to Google index:
- Check your Google Webmaster Tools account for alerts or site crawl errors;
- Check your site server for possible hacker attacks;
- Check your site Robots.txt (better add one if you don’t have any just to be on the safe side);
- Check if there were some sudden (negative) changes in backlink profile: both sudden rise and sudden decrease in backlinks may seem unnatural;
- Check your site outbound links (try free Xenu Link Sleuth for that)
- Check if all your site pages return proper header status responses;
- Analyze your site recent on-page SEO changes;
- Review your user generated content (for possible links to bad neighborhoods or improper vocabulary);
- Try browsing your site with the user agent being Googlebot;
- Anything else? Please share in the comments!
Also, here’s a perfect case study for you to read about a person’s website penalized and then reinstated.
Ann Smarty
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66 Responses to “How to Diagnose the Reason of Google Penalty”
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Ann Smarty of Searchenginejournal, good post on how to identify Google penalties: http://tinyurl.com/mjrkt6
How to Diagnose the Reason of Google Penalty | Daily SEO Tip http://tinyurl.com/mjrkt6 #SEOM
How to Diagnose the Reason of Google Penalty: http://bit.ly/krwF9 Definitely a nice checklist to pay attention to.
If you have listed URLs in sitemap which are not navigable manually from your site then you may face Google Penalty. http://bit.ly/krwF9
This is a good list. A great follow up (several great follow ups, actually) would be to go over exactly how to do each item. For instance, how does one determine if they are linking to a bad neighborhood, how does one determine if a recent SEO change might have gotten them into trouble, etc. Maybe more appropriate for a forum post, but they would still make interesting blog posts.
Natalia Reply:
September 4th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Recnt SEO changes are indeed a key factor in my book, and this topic really deserves a post on its own.
Good information about Google penalty. I’ll check these factors for my site. Thanks.
Good tips and I will definately be bookmarking this for future reference just incase, but I’m always careful with my sites and none have been penalised yet. Thanks for this.
You’re assuming that a penalty means a reduction or elimination of google referral traffic.
I have two sites that were “penalized” from a PR6 or a PR3 and 4 for selling text links (I guess). No reduction in traffic and any adsense blocks on there make more that even after the penalty.
So what’s my motivation to follow G’s rules and not get penalized?
Ann Smarty Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Maybe, that wasn’t actually a penalty?
Ken Savage Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
what else would the front page going from PR6 to PR4 within a month and then the next month PR3. And now all of the internal 44,000 pages show PR0. Only the front page has PR.
Also the site is 13 years old and has had original content on it for 10+ years.
Robert Enriquez Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:26 pm
that is not a penalty. Google may have been readjusting or changing the Pagerank algo which may or may not affect actual rankings.
There are lots of pages on top of the search engines that are Grey PR or PR0
Dave Reply:
September 5th, 2009 at 3:14 am
It surely is a penalty. I have had the same thing happen to me and have seen it happen to other sites. PR drops several notches suddenly after being high and stable for years with no loss in traffic or rankings. Its a shot across the bow penalty. It does nothing but scare the crap out of site owners. But it most certainly is a penalty.
Ken – How do you say a site is penalized and the traffic stays the same?
Ken Savage Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:26 pm
well then you gotta define what a penalty is. To me a penalty is a reduction or restriction of traffic or rankings.
A ban is not showing up anywhere in SEPRs.
imho
Robert Enriquez Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
you just stated that you didnt have any reduction in traffic but that your Pagerank dropped.
Ken Savage Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
that’s right. I don’t know what to call what happened to this site but why would I care other than my ego taking a hit from PR6 to PR3.
Pagerank can drop for many reasons, and most of the reasons are because of the value of the links to the site.
Main reason is that the backlink’s Pagerank can drop which can also drop your site’s PR.
One of my sites dropped to a PR2 but it still holds all of it’s rankings/traffic
No reduction in traffic and any adsense blocks on there make more that even after the penalty.thanks a lot nice post.
thanks for sharing these great tips Ann.
Another nice articly by you, Ann one thing I would like to request you as regular visitors of your blog, don’t you think the comment sections font sould little bit increse.
I think so.
People often found to be confusing and cant get what happened when their rankings drop and their site is out of index. This post deals clearly with diagnosing them and also I recently have come across an article that lists the reasons for these. These kind of posts make clear about the errors to be aware of and the techniques they should avoid.
what else would the front page going from PR6 to PR4 within a month and then the next month PR3. nice post.
I believe Google does lower the Toolbar Pagerank indicator to penalize those who sell text links. It is probably meant to lower the potential volume of text link sales that such sites might get. It also could be a slight ego-depressant for those who care about TBPR.
What this action really does is to devalue the TBPR even more than it was. Given the negative effects the TBPR has in encouraging those who are in the reciprocal linking business, it really is time for the TBPR to be quietly dropped. Google has sucked out all the marketing value from this and by now it only creates negative effects for them.
Main reason is that the backlink’s Pagerank can drop which can also drop your site’s PR.thanks for sharing.nice post.
Hi Ann, and thanks for the post. As someone who has been suffering from a Google penalty that we cannot fathom for about a year now, I’m interested to hear if you have any suggestions for a penalty that you just can’t for the life of you figure out. Is there, for instance, a way you can get through to Matt Cutts or a member of his team to get a definitive answer as to what the problem is, I wonder? It’s frustrating when you’re forever second guessing but barking up the wrong tree… and then you finally run out of ideas as to what could possibly be causing the problem.
Thanks.
Ann Smarty Reply:
September 4th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I guess there is no way to force the answer but you may try posting in Google Webmaster groups – sometimes Googlers respond there.
Hi,
This is a great post, short and sweet and I think it covers pretty much all bases. It’s a shame that Google can’t be more transparent with these things, I’ve had some experience of this myself when trying out some highly optimised paragraphs of text, it was difficult to figure out what was causing this as it was at the same time as a site redesign, but in the end it was tracked down to this, once the offending text was removed our site jumped back up the rankings in a matter of days.
Thanks for the nice advise. I have seen an article on same topic at search engine journal also. I am subscribing your rss feed for regular updates of your nice SEO tips
My front page was taken out of the index, despite having *tons* more links than any other. It’s driving me nuts. I can’t imagine what might be bugging Google because it’s been there for a few years. I submitted a reinclusion, but nothing. Why can’t they hint at the problem and alert you, instead of you having to 1) figure out you’ve been penalised a month or so down the line (with hardly any changes to the page in a while) and 2) what the reason is?
I’m generally a big Google fan, but this is very, very irritating. And costing me money.
Richard – you have duplicate content from http://www.allyoulike.com/?p=22103 and they rank higher than you for the same content. Google has filtered your site out
Change your content that’s on your page(s)…and you should see your site back to normal in about 7-10days. I have done this with many clients and some w/out doing the reinclusion request.
Let me know where to send the invoice lol
Great simple points as always, another fact that is sometimes a headsmack tip, check the website performance and monitor its uptime.
A drop in traffic can be a webhosting issue and not always a ban from google.
One of my website has currently dropped from page 1 to page 11. Guess I will check all these factors. Thanks!
I had an issue with a client who had a penalty not too long ago, for one specific keyword phrase. I took it to the Google Forums, and a few things I got in response were the following:
– Don’t have a page/directory titled “Links”
– Keep your XML sitemap with accurate update frequencies, if using that detail at all
– Be careful with your outgoing links, make sure they’re intact and NOT spammy
– Keep close watch on your Robots.txt file, make sure it’s proper and user-friendly, not blatantly sneaky to appease the SERP spiders
Making sure all that’s in place can make some differences.
Great list of stuff to check. In terms of reconsideration, a lot of people are of the mind that you should list anything and everything that you think could have contributed to your site being deindexed, especially any shady tactics you might have been engaging in (after cleaning them up as much as possible). Doing so will show Google that you’re willing to follow their standards and try to be a squeaky clean webmaster.
Good information about Google penalty. I’ll check all these factors.
I have seen an article on same topic at search engine journal also. I am subscribing your rss feed for regular updates of your nice SEO tips very nice post thanks.
Wow, great post. This will come in handy
I can’t imagine what might be bugging Google because it’s been there for a few years.
Leading to chat, leader at chat. thanks
Robert – I massaged the text a bit and got back onto the index within about 2 days. I’m alarmed Google can’t figure out the original source of the text! Each time some twit lifts the text and they have a higher PR, you’re back to square 1. Maybe I should generate some part of it – e.g. quotes, or a couple paragraphs – so it benefits from “freshness”. In any case, thanks – will keep that in mind.
I can’t imagine what might be bugging Google because it’s been there for a few years.
Ann Smarty of Searchenginejournal, good post on how to identify Google penalties: that word really supported it.so i agree . thanks for creation.
How to Diagnose the Reason of Google Penalty – http://shar.es/1oE6f
Good tips and I will definately be bookmarking this for future reference just incase, but I’m always careful with my sites and none have been penalised yet. Thanks for this.
Well, you help me, I understand, thank you. But the matter. . . . . .
Its great to give new life to the site but how do we know that site is penalized?
Awesome! That is all amazing stuff, and I will do all those. I only use backlinkwatch right now for checking links, and google wont show nearly all of them..thanks again!
Sheila
These points are important to note down. If you see your site being penalised by google, its better to do a recap of what changes you did in your site. Probably google didnot liked the changes you did!!!
There may be various reason to may be Penalize by Google like Cloacking, hidden content, Black hat SEo etc.
Good to have bumped onto your blog and met you.
Having had some kind of penalty at beginning of May would add that try to reverse everything you did onsite in the days leading up to it and don’t panic either although that is easier said than done when it occurs and you find your popular website pages nowhere. In my case 13 days later the site re-appeared so THANK YOU google although i am still unsure what caused the penalty and the removal of it.
thanks you very good muchhhh
great tips and advice, thank you for sharing
That sound’s perfect. I’m sure this will be used by everyone, because it’s really helpful for all. Thanks for all the great info.
Thanks for the tips.
There are many issues that are often over looked
Google should at least indicate if a penalty has been slapped on a website in Webmaster Tools. My website used to rank well for its keywords, and it’s suddenly lost a lot of rankings. Even worse, some sites that have absolutely nothing to do with the keyword are ranking on the first page.
I know, my site dropped from PR3 to PR1, and I STILL to this day cant figure out what went wrong. Sometimes its almost impossible to tell whats going on. you know. But with time, it started getting higher. YAY~ Great article. Thanks
Jill
good perfect