Google Penalty

What is Google Penalty?

A penalty is generally a punishment, especially in football(soccer). Google Penalty has the same meaning. You got Google Penalty (punishment) when you violate their rules. For example: One day, you discover that your page rank = 0 or your search engine index is disappeared, you know that you was banned by google search engine.

How to know that you was penalized?
To check for Google penalties with any degree of certainty can be difficult.

1. For example, if your website experiences a sudden reduction in ranking for its main keyword terms it can be caused solely by a Google algorithm change or search results (SERP) update.
Yesterday, you got 1000 unique page view, but today you got only 10.

2. If your web site suffers sudden and dramatic fall in ranking and no Google algorithm changes have been made, then a Google penalty may be the cause, especially if you have been embarking on activities which might have contravened Google's Webmaster Guidelines. The most severe Google penalties lead to total website de-indexing and where the SEO misdemeanour is serious a site ban may be imposed by Google, accompanied by a Page Rank reduction to 0 and a greyed out Google Toolbar Page Rank indication.

3. Crawl rate drop. For example: Before: 5 minute. After: half a day

Test for a Penalty

This can be accomplished by using the site:yourdomainname.com -asdfasdf command within a Google search window. If no URL's are indexed and no backlinks show up when the link:yourdomain.com is entered then there is a high probability of a Google penalty, especially if your site used to be indexed and used to show backlinks

How to solve problem
If you suspect your website has received a Google penalty, you can contact Google by sending an e-mail to help@google.com to ask for help. They will usually check the spam report queue and offer some form of assistance.

Interestingly, in a recent move by Google, web sites which are in clear violation of Google's webmaster guidelines or terms of service may receive an e-mail from Google advising them to clean up their act, warning of a penalty and website de-indexing. When the breach of Google's terms (e.g. spam or hidden text) is removed from the offending site, Google will usually automatically clear the penalty and re-index the site when the webmaster completes a Google re-inclusion request.

Main cause which make your site banned

Linking to banned sites:
+ Run a test on all outbound links from your site to see if you are linking to any sites which have themselves been Google banned. These will be sites which are Google de-listed and show Page Rank 0 with a greyed out Toolbar Page Rank indicator.
+ Find all outbound links to other sites and check if those sites contains inappropriate information like sex, pirate software...
+ Those sites contains more than 100 links. Because google thinks those site is link farm. So you have to be carefull when submit to directory
+ Those site used redirect. Many people said that it can. But others said "NO". So it is better not link to those sites.

Linking to bad neighbourhoods

A Bad Neighbourhood is a term used for websites associated with unethical websites. This can be from websites that use BlackHat techniques or websites such as pornography, gambling or illegal activities.
Websites in a Bad Neighbourhood will frequently be penalised by Google.
Being in a Bad Neighbourhood may imply your linking to unethical websites, your site is hosted on the same servers as unethical websites, or your site formally hosted unethical content.

what happens when we link to bad neighbourhood, Popular and verified predications

1. Googlebot will stop visiting your site or they come once in a while,

2. Your number of pages will drop from the google index from time to time and finally your whole site will be removed,

3. Your site will be totally removed from the index automatically when google detects you do excessivive linking to bad neighbourhood for the purpose of increasing link popularity or PageRank,

4. I have seen one type one penalty in google for linking to bad or doubtful neighbourboods or spam site,
What they do they stop regular visits to the site, Instead of doing regular visits they will visit the site once in a while and index it, No ranking penalty nothing but only penalty is reduction of regular visits, Other type of penalty I saw google is showing towards doubtful sites is by not showing any fresh dates near the ranking result of the site,

S0 it depends, better to be on the safer side and not to do any linking to bad neighbourhood You should be checking the status of the outbound link often

Automated query penalty

Google penalties can sometimes be caused by using automated query tools which make use of Google's API, particularly when such queries are made from the same IP address that hosts your website. These tools break Google's terms of service (as laid out in their Webmaster Guidelines). Google allows certain automated queries into its database using its analytic tools and when accessing through a registered Google API account. Unauthorised types of automated query can cause problems, particularly when used excessively.
One of the common automatic queries is site:yourdomain (webmaster usually used it to check their sites). But problem happen when you query so much in short period ==> You will see captchar to authorize. So do not write such queries.

Over optimization penalties
These can be triggered by poor SEO techniques such as aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text. When managing link building campaigns, always vary the link text used and incorporate a variety of different keyword terms. Use a backlink anchor text analyser tool to check backlinks for sufficient keyword spread. Optimising for high paying keywords like "Viagra" can further elevate risk, so mix in some long tail keywords into the equation. For brand new domains, add no more than 5 new one way backlinks a week and use deep linking to website internal pages, rather than just homepage link building.

Website cross linking & link schemes
Link schemes (see picture)

If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between those sites. Extensive interlinking of websites, particularly if they are on the same C Class IP address (same ISP) can be viewed as "link schemes" by Google, breaking their terms of service.
The risks are even higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back to site A. If you must use site wide links, make sure they are not reciprocal links. Link schemes built around links in the footer of each webpage are particularly risky. The reality is that site wide links do little to increase site visibility in the Google SERPS, nor do they improve Page Rank more than a single link, as Google only counts one link from a site to another. KSL Consulting also believe that Yahoo! now applies a similar policy. There is some evidence that the extensive use of site wide links can lower website Google trust value, which can subsequently reduce ranking.

Hidden text or links
Most people understand hidden text is something like white text on a white background, and know to steer clear of it. Let me show you an example of a hidden link. Normally a hidden link could be in several forms:
- hidden text that also happens to be hyperlinked, e.g. white text on a white background, and the text is a link
- using CSS to make hyperlinks that are tiny, like 1 pixel high text
- hiding links in something like the period in the middle of a paragraph of text
Here is some examples got from mattcutts

In the first picture, we see nothing. There are 2 normal links. But in the second picture, when you mouse move "mission", you will see the ads text appeared. When you review source code, you will see hidden text
as in picture 3. That is what hidden text and hidden link means. And you should avoid them












Keyword stuffing (spamming)
Remove excessive keyword stuffing in your website content (unnatural repetitions of the same phrase in body text). Always use natural, well written web copywriting techniques.
Keyword stuffing is considered to be an unethical search engine optimization (SEO) technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags.

Keyword stuffing had been used in the past to obtain maximum search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings today. In particular, Google no longer gives good rankings to pages employing this technique.

Hiding text from the visitor is done in many different ways. Text colored to blend with the background, CSS "Z" positioning to place text "behind" an image — and therefore out of view of the visitor — and CSS absolute positioning to have the text positioned far from the page center are all common techniques. By 2005, many invisible text techniques were easily detected by major search engines.

"Noscript" tags are another way to place hidden content within a page. While they are a valid optimization method for displaying an alternative representation of scripted content, they may be abused, since search engines may index content that is invisible to most visitors.

Inserted text sometimes includes words that are frequently searched (such as "sex"), even if those terms bear little connection to the content of a page, in order to attract traffic to advert-driven pages.

In the past, keyword stuffing was considered to be either a white hat or a black hat tactic, depending on the context of the technique, and the opinion of the person judging it. While a great deal of keyword stuffing was employed to aid in spamdexing, which is of little benefit to the user, keyword stuffing in certain circumstances was not intended to skew results in a deceptive manner. Whether the term carries a pejorative or neutral connotation is dependent on whether the practice is used to pollute the results with pages of little relevance, or to direct traffic to a page of relevance that would have otherwise been de-emphasized due to the search engine's inability to interpret and understand related ideas. This is no longer the case. Search engines now employ themed, related keyword techniques to interpret the intent of the content on a page.











Just place keyword in some major positions. Put keyword in title, url, first paragraph, image file name , alt in tag img, meta description

Link buying or selling
Check for any paid links (I.E. buying text links from known link suppliers / companies). There is some evidence that buying links can hurt rankings and this was implied by comments from Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) on his Google SEO blog. Matt states that Google will also devalue links from companies selling text links, such that they offer zero value to the recipient in terms for improving website rankings or Page Rank. More recently, Google applied a Page Rank penalty to known link sellers and many low quality directories.
==> If you use TEXT-LINK-ADS, you will be penalized. Be careful.

Reciprocal link building campaigns
Excessive reciprocal linking may trigger a Google penalty or cause a SERPS filter to be applied when
1. The same or very similar link anchor text is used over and over again
2. Large numbers of reciprocal links are added in a relatively short time.

The dangers are made worse by adding reciprocal links to
+ Low quality sites
+ Websites which have an unrelated theme

So:
+ Avoid reciprocal link
+ Use one way link to similiar theme site
+ Link to quality site

Thin Affiliates and "Made for Adsense" sites
Google dislike those kind of sites. So try to avoid it. Make quality site with original content.

Google Penalty Recovery Strategy
+ Fixing the cause of the problem
+ Waiting for Google to remove any over optimisation penalties or SERPS filters. It takes around 2-3 months after all website problems are corrected.
+ The Google algorithm can automatically remove penalties if the affected website is still Google indexed.
+ To check whether a particular website is still Google indexed, refer to our Google indexing page.
+ If your website has been Google de-indexed and lost Page Rank, then you will need to make a Google re-inclusion request.
+ Follow webmaster guide lines.

+ The best recovery strategy is check your site regularly. Found it ASAP before drop significantly
+ Don't forget to check your link building strategy as poor SEO often causes Google penalties.
+ Removing any reciprocal links to low quality websites, or sites having no relevance to your website theme.