What is the google penalty?

Google penalty tends to affect a site’s search ranks, where google penalizes sites that have engaged in practices that are against webmaster guidelines which results in a drop in ranking, and also a drop in traffic for the site.

Penalties are caused by backlinks that are manipulative that intend to favor some companies in the search results on other companies, so when such links are added, Google imposes penalties to discourage other companies from following this type of practice. Some people believe that, but we have another opinion that Google can not penalize the website unless it’s 100% sure that the website owner is the one who has done that, so they just assume that those links were purchased by the site owner and then they decide to penalize that site but we strongly disagree with that -

Example

Google has a long history of famous algorithm updates:

Google hummingbird: which Google started using in 2013 and designed to focus on the meaning behind words and paying more attention to each word and ensuring that the whole conversation, sentence, or meaning is taken into account rather than specific words

In 2015, Google released a significant new ranking algorithm that is used to provide mobile-friendly pages -Google mobile search results- it’s called mobilegeddon and also referred to as mobilepocalyse.

Google panda update that was developed in 2011 to keep sites with poor quality content from being in Google's top search results it’s being updated from time to time and some sites previously banned may escape if they have made the right changes.

Google then launched the google penguin update in 2012 to catch sites that are spanning their search results by buying or obtaining them through links that are designed to boost Google's ranking

Launched in 2014 Google pigeon update provides a more practical and accurate local search. The new algorithm improves the distance and location of the ranking.

Developed in 2013, Google payday updated that its main aim is to clean up search results from traditional spam queries.

Google pirate update was introduced in 2012 designed to prevent sites with many copyright infringement reports.

Google exact match domain is a filter Google used back in 2012 to prevent poor sites from ranking well just because they have words that match search terms in their domain names. When an update occurs, sites that have improved their content may regain good ranking.

Launched in 2012 top-heavy update is meant to prevent sites with top-heavy ads from ranking well, it’s periodically updated, and when an update occurs, sites that have removed excessive ads may regain lost ranking.

So if your ranking and web traffic suddenly drops, this means that Google has penalized your website, but there are several ways of recovering from this penalty, like:

If you have been hit by Penguin, then you must analyze your backlink profile and anchor text distribution

If your penalty is caused by panda, then you must perform a full site audit to look for site structure problems

Once you have performed and completed your recovery plan, file a reconsideration request from google, and remember to be patient because these requests can be rejected several times before being granted.

Updated on: 22/03/2023