Google is believed to apply a variety of filters to sites that fail to follow their TOS. More often than not, if you correct all errors, you will be forgiven and filters will be removed (even with no reconsideration request required).
The major problem is, webmasters might be completely unaware of the fact the site is filtered or under penalty. They might be unaware of (internal) duplicate content problem, notorious bad neighborhood problems or “over-optimization” issues. The possible issues might be numerous and they can be totally invisible even to an SEO-savvy person.
So here are a few flags that might mean your site is forced to have lower rankings than it deserves due to the penalty or filter:
1. Sudden Google referral traffic drop (or sudden loss of major rankings). As discussed earlier this change may be applied to the whole site (which might mean the problem is in the external backlinks) or to a single page (which means you should look for the problem internally). Similarly, the change may effect all your major terms or only a few of them.
2. Huge differences in rankings if you query general search and a single database. This one is not confirmed officially but some webmasters notice that their site rankings are much lower in general google.com search than when checking a separate database directly.
3. Your domain is not #1 for [yourdomain.com] search. Note that this can be a sign of some issue only for established sites – new sites can be found nowhere for the domains search quite naturally.
4. [site:yourdomain.com] returns 0 results (again, for established, prior indexed sites). This flag is the most dangerous one: it might mean some dramatic error on your side (you might have mixed something up with Robots.txt, robots meta tags or redirects) or you might have done something really bad. In this case, reconsideration request is your only hope, I am afraid.
Good article. One point I would like to add is the benefits of Google Webmaster Tools. Using this tool has lot of benefits and one of them is to figure out if there are errors during Google’s crawl. If you have a website, I highly recommend this tool. You can find this tool if you google “webmaster tools”.
Even for older, well-established sites all of these things can happen temporarily without any penalty being involved.
People should make sure that radical changes stick before hitting the panic button.
Normal churn usually clears up within 2-3 days, although on some rare occasions it can last 1-2 weeks (Google often rolls back the index when churn lasts that long).
If you see no improvement after 3-4 weeks, you’re probably penalized.
Good article, I know of point 3. being a technique used to check for Google filtering. I don’t understand point 2., what do you mean by “checking a separate database directly” – “site:” operator?
As an avid follower/reader of Michael Martinez I will say again, I read his first and yours second. I see he has also mentioned you in one of his most recent articles. I doubt many people follow his scientific minded approach to search. I hope this is not a plug, but everyone who is going to continue in seo as a career should at least read and investigate the links in “The Scientists of Search Engine Optimization”… January 13, 2009.
Thank you Ann for your contributions and insight and thank you Michael.
@birdlegs, thanks so much for these kind words.
On Monday one of my sites experienced a sudden drop in rankings for all of it’s major keywords. I went from first and second page positions to page 3 ,4, and worse for some terms. The site is almost 4 years old and has been very stable for a long time.
I’ve ruled out the “bad neighborhood” and “duplicate content” issues as possible causes and my webmaster tools is not indicating anything wrong. I have not been doing any blackhat. I’m worried because I have never seen such a sudden and drastic change in one day for this site.
So I am wondering, while I’m waiting to see if it sticks, what techniques would be considered safe for trying to recover the positions without making it worse?
@Jose, if you are sure you haven’t done anything wrong, the best solution now is to add quality content and wait.
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Great to know the warning signs! Thx
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[...] 4 Google Penalty Flags : Have You Been Penalized by Google? [...]
[...] 4 Google Penalty Flags : Have You Been Penalized by Google? [...]
Excellent presentation.I agree,being penalized(Google) is the hardest thing thing in online marketing.It does mean ,if your an SEO you haven’t done that ethical SEO stratagem.Great.
I’m glad to read about these warning signs as it appears that several websites in my resort town niche have had some sort of penalties recently – one site with a substantial drop in rankings that i just recently discovered.
good to know some of the things not to do!
I would love to hear more about “checking a separate database directly.” Could you elaborate on what you mean.
Great tips from a cute chick
I thought it was a really interesting article, although a newcomer to this game I am glad to see that I am doing the right things: google webmaster tools etc.