{"id":10156,"date":"2015-03-31T13:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T10:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digitalmarketingpro.net\/?p=364"},"modified":"2021-06-22T18:51:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T15:51:46","slug":"how-to-check-if-your-website-is-penalized-by-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/how-to-check-if-your-website-is-penalized-by-google\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Check if Your Website is Penalized by Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first step to make before even optimizing your website for Google, is to check if your domain is under a penalty.<\/p>\n

A website that is penalized by Google cannot achieve good rankings, so your priority is to find out which algorithmic changes are affecting your web property and create a recovery plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are Google Penalties?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Beginners to blogging and webmasters that don\u2019t have SEO experience, hear the words panda<\/em>, penguin<\/em>, pigeon<\/em>, hummingbird<\/em> and wonder why all the online World makes a fuss about these animals!<\/p>\n

The answer is pretty simple, these are the names that Google (and the press) gave to the different set of changes Google is making to their ranking algorithm.<\/p>\n

Google officially stated that every year they are making hundreds of changes to their search algorithms in order to improve the quality of their search results.<\/p>\n

Every time they make a change, there are winners and losers. This means that some websites are positively affected because they get better rankings (which means more Google organic traffic<\/strong><\/a>) while some other websites are losing traffic because their rankings were lowered or lost completely.<\/p>\n

Why do you care?<\/b><\/h2>\n

It is well known that you cannot achieve too many things online without Google. Like it or not Google is the best source of traffic especially if you are looking for targeted traffic.<\/p>\n

Getting your website on the top positions of Google<\/b><\/a> produces a number of benefits that you just cannot ignore.<\/p>\n

So, that\u2019s the first reason why you should be able to tell if your website is filtered by the Google algorithms.<\/p>\n

Another reason is that if you know from which Google update you are penalized, you can take corrective actions so that next time there is a change, you are out of the penalty (this is not easy but it happens if you make the effort).<\/p>\n

Finally, recognizing Google penalties can answer the question \u2018Why did I suddenly lose my traffic?<\/em>\u201d since if you are hit by a Google penalty the changes in your traffic will be more than visible.<\/p>\n

How to tell if your website has been penalized by Google?<\/b><\/h2>\n

There are two ways to find out if your website was penalized by Google. The first one is through the Google Search Console and the second is by looking at your Google analytics traffic reports and comparing your traffic with the dates the Google updated occurred.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see how you can use both methods to track and identify Google penalties.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Login to Google Search Console<\/h3>\n

If you have not yet registered your website with the Google Search Console<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0this is the time to do it.<\/p>\n

Google Search Console (previously Webmaster tools), is the medium Google is using to communicate with webmasters and inform them about potential problems their websites may have and this includes manual penalties as well.<\/p>\n

Before showing where exactly you can find this in Google Search Console tools, it should be mentioned that there are 2 types of penalties and it is important to know their difference.<\/p>\n

#1 – Manual Penalty: <\/b>A human (probably from the Google Quality team), imposed a penalty to your website. This can happen because of a number of reasons<\/b><\/a> and it can be either site-wide i.e. affecting the website as a whole or partial i.e. affecting only some pages of your site.<\/p>\n

When this is the case, Google will give you an indication of what the problem is together with a list of actions you can take to correct the issues. Once you make the necessary changes, you can submit a reconsideration request and they will tell you if the penalty has been removed or not.<\/p>\n

#2 – Algorithmic Penalty<\/b>: This is the most common type and it is automatic. Algorithmic penalties are not reported to Google Search console tools and there is no option to fill in a reconsideration request. They only way to identify if you were hit by an automatic penalty, is to use the method described below.<\/p>\n

Algorithmic penalties are a result of the continuous changes Google is making to their ranking algorithms<\/strong><\/a> (that\u2019s when the animal names mentioned above are gaining more importance for webmasters).<\/p>\n

Going back to the example, you can login to Google Search Console to see if your website is under a manual penalty.<\/p>\n

You can find this under SECURITY & MANUAL ACTIONS \/ MANUAL ACTIONS.<\/p>\n

\"Manual
Check for Google Penalties using the Manual Actions Report.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you see the message \u201cNo issues detected<\/em>\u201d, then you are clean and you don\u2019t have to take further actions; you need though to continue with the steps below to find out if you were impacted by an algorithmic penalty.<\/p>\n

In case there is a manual penalty, you need to read to carefully read the message with the reasons, try to correct the problem and then request a review of the site.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Login to Google Analytics and review your Google traffic<\/b><\/h3>\n

The best way to check if your website was penalized by an automatic penalty is to login to Google analytics and review your Google organic traffic.<\/p>\n

If you see a drop in traffic during the dates that Google released an algorithmic change, then most probably you were hit and that\u2019s the reason that your traffic dropped.<\/p>\n

Select your website from the Google analytics dashboard and then go to ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Source \/ Medium.<\/p>\n

From the list select GOOGLE \/ ORGANIC. What you see now in the report is the number of visits you get from Google search.<\/p>\n

Next, select the reporting period from the top right and go back as much as you can.<\/p>\n

\"Google
Google Organic Traffic Report<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What you need to do now is compare the dates that you see a major drop (or increase) in traffic with the dates that an update was released.<\/p>\n

This handy guide<\/b><\/a> from moz<\/em> shows all the \u00a0dates in the last 16 years that Google made a change to their ranking algorithm.<\/p>\n

Hint: You can also create annotations in the Google Analytics Report to mark the dates that a change was made in the same view as the report graph.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you see a sudden drop in traffic in a date (or close to the dates) that an update was released, then look in the moz<\/em> report to see what kind of update it was and start reading on what you can do to recover.<\/p>\n

What happens when your website is penalized?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The first thing that happens is that you lose your Google traffic (or part of it).<\/p>\n

The second thing is that you also lose some (or all) of your Google trust and this means that you need to show good faith and be patient until you gain it back.<\/p>\n

Google does not like websites that are spammy or are trying to trick their algorithm and that\u2019s why they remove them from their index.<\/p>\n

Getting back to the index does not mean that you will regain your rankings and return to the pre-penalty stage and in addition it will be harder from now on to achieve high rankings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They want to show good websites<\/b><\/a> in their SERPS and violating their guidelines is a very bad move and it is your responsibility (not theirs) to play with the rules all the time.<\/p>\n

How long do penalties hold?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Manual penalties are in effect until you submit and successfully pass a reconsideration request or until they expire. Some penalties may hold for 6 months while we have read cases that penalties stay for 2 years before they expire.<\/p>\n

Just to make it clear, when a manual penalty expires, this does not mean that the website is clean and will recover rankings and traffic.<\/p>\n

It simply means that the penalty is no longer showing in webmaster tools but if you did not do anything to address the issues, the website will most probably be caught by the automatic penalties and still be under a penalty.<\/p>\n

When you are hit by a change in the ranking algorithm, you should take corrective measures as soon as possible and wait for the next release of the algorithm to see if you recovered or not.<\/p>\n

There are some cases that recovery can be faster as there are algorithmic changes that are continuous but in the majority of the cases you will have to wait for the next major Google update to see if the changes you made are producing positive results.<\/p>\n

What to do if you are in trouble?<\/b><\/h2>\n

There is no quick answer, search Google about this and you will see various opinions and many things you can do.<\/p>\n

To save you valuable time, read my summary steps below:<\/p>\n

Unnatural links pointing to your website<\/b> – if you did any of this: buying links, exchanging links, guest posting for links, commenting for links, submitting your website to thousands of spammy directories – then most probably you got a manual penalty and a message in Google search console tools.<\/p>\n

What you can do to recover? Ask webmasters to remove the links (or \u201cnofollow<\/strong><\/a>\u201d them), document your efforts, use Google disavow tool<\/b><\/a> to ask Google not to take into account those links and submit a reconsideration request.<\/p>\n

If you fail the first time, take your time repeat the process and submit a review request again.<\/p>\n

Unnatural links pointing from your website to other sites<\/b> – if you used to sell links or have many links in your pages pointing to other sites, then remove those links (or \u201cnofollow\u201d them) and submit a reconsideration request.<\/p>\n

Thin content <\/b>– If your website has many pages that have little or no content then either delete them or merge them together. \u201cNo index\u201d the pages that are not useful and try to add useful content that is unique and original.<\/p>\n

Recommended reading: How to find and fix thin content pages.<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Duplicate content<\/b> – Google doesn\u2019t like content that is not unique so if you are constantly copying content from other websites stop doing this and follow the same steps as with \u2018thin content\u2019 above.<\/p>\n

Optimize your website<\/b> – Having a non SEO friendly website is not a reason for getting a penalty, but in situations that you are in trouble by a penalty, it helps optimizing your website as much as you can. You can use my SEO audit checklist<\/b><\/a> to optimize your website for Google.<\/p>\n

How to avoid getting penalized by Google?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The best way to recover from a Google penalty is to avoid it in the first place. From my experience webmasters are always looking for shortcuts to get higher rankings and this leads them into doing things that Google does not like.<\/p>\n

I have said many times that in order to achieve good results with Google you need to be patient and play by the rules. Don\u2019t believe what you read about increasing your rankings with tricks that can get you into trouble.<\/p>\n

The recipe of success has been the same in the last 17 years I am working online and this is no other than:<\/p>\n