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Google Penalties

The Marketing Shop.com
By Jenna Ryan
September 2007

Google Penalties Search engine penalties are a ball and chain, used by the big search engines to keep web criminals at bay. It happens all the time, websites get penalized for what seems like no reason. One day your site is broaching page one, the next it’s banished to page 330. You may have been privy to a Google Penalty. When this happens, you can kiss your prestigious rankings and steady stream of leads goodbye.

Detecting Google Penalty Triggers

Violating Google’s Terms of Use policy or doing something against its Webmaster Guidelines can get your website penalized. The goal is to keep website owners from trying to trick the search crawlers by artificially achieving high rankings. The search engine giant is constantly changing its algorithm to stop websites from getting to the top of results unnaturally.

Avoiding Google Penalty Triggers

Over-optimization – If you use every on-page optimization trick in the book and load your entire site and its code with keyword phrases, it could trigger a Google penalty. There is a fine line between what’s good optimization and what’s over-optimization.

Mirror Sites or Duplicate Page Content – If your website content is duplicated on other websites online, Google will likely only index one of the pages in the search results. The duplicated page will be penalized and pushed down in search results. Doorway pages are equally bad.

Broken Links – A website with many broken links may incur penalties.

Bad Robots.txt Page – The robots.txt page must be written “just so” if you want search crawlers to index your website.

Cloaking - the process of submitting one thing to a search engine and then displaying something else to the end user. Sometimes a web page is optimized for a particular search engine or phrase, and then the page or code is swapped when an end user clicks on a search listing.

302 Re-directs – This is a common means used by webmasters for redirecting traffic from one web page to another to avoid broken links. This is also a means to trick the search engines used by bad SEOs. Such black hat SEO tactics are called “Doorway Pages.” The 302 Re-Direct is temporary and the wrong device to use. The proper redirect is the 301 Permanent Redirect according to Google.

Deliberate Misspellings & Gibberish – Google especially loathes computer-generated content.

Text Manipulation - Making text on the site the same color as the background was a popular way to gain rankings in the olden days, but today has horrid consequences if you’re caught. Another Black Hat SEO tactic is “Tiny Text” which attempts to trick the search engines by making the text 1 – 2 pixels, too small for humans to see.

Automated Site Submissions or Ranking Checks – Automated SEO Products like “Web Ranking Gold” are specifically mentioned in Google’s Guidelines as using too many resources and straining its system.

Hidden Links & Text – Putting links in a webpage that human users cannot see or making the text on a page so tiny that the human eye cannot see. This also refers to making text the same color as the background.

Linking to Bad Neighborhoods – Linking to bad neighborhoods or to other sites that are under penalty can cause Google to put you in the same penalized category. You will not come under penalty if a bad site links to you, otherwise your competition could ruin your website’s search engine placement.

Why Should You Care?

Your website will lose rankings.
You may lose business that would have otherwise found you in Google.
You could spend money in optimization fees, only to have it go down the drain due to penalties.
You could waste your own precious time building a website that’s rift with penalty triggers.
Your site may be penalized without your knowledge.
Your site may be able to achieve high search results faster.

What Happens When Your Site Is Penalized?

When your site is penalized by Google the following things can happen:

Removed from search results altogether.
Dunked for specific keyword phrases.
Permanently banned from results (for severe offenses)
Page ranking can be deducted or erased
PR Bar is greyed out (most severe offenses)
According to Matt Cutts, Google will soon be notifying some webmasters of website penalties.

How Long Do Penalties Last?

1-3 months (First Time Offenders)
Full year (after correction)
Permanently (Repeated Offenders, serious)

What To Do If Your Website Is Penalized

Discover if you have indeed been penalized
Discover why you have been penalized
Give it a few days
Check your website to see if it is violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
Beg for forgiveness
Fix the problem
Let Google know you’ve fixed the problem by filling out their form.
Start over with a new website domain with new information

Penalty Paranoia

With all these penalties flying around, and with no way to be sure what exactly caused your rankings to drop, it is easy to become a little paranoid about even the slightest shift in rankings.

Google is really good (and getting better) about restoring your site once you fix the problem. Penalties are becoming the norm in the quest for higher rankings. (It’s a fact of life) When you overcome a penalty, you learn something that your competitors may not yet know, and you know how to avoid the fireball in the future.

How To Avoid Google Penalties

Follow the rules. Don’t buy into every fly-by-night offer to get your site to the top. Many unscrupulous companies offer you the world. Buyer beware. Make sure your website search marketing pros are ethically adhering to White Hat SEO principals.

Don’t get greedy. When doing good for a particular search term, more is not always more. Over-optimization is a big penalty trigger, such as using a keyword phrase over and over again.

Pace yourself. Google is on the hunt for sites that achieve its criteria rankings naturally without resorting to automation or trickery.