How to Diagnose a Google Penalty
If your website suddenly experiences a severe drop in traffic, there is a chance that the Google search engine may have inflicted a penalty on it. This is a common result of engaging in unaccepted search engine marketing techniques. However, this sometimes also happens to Web developers who, without realizing it, share a server with bad neighbors. Regardless of the reason it occurred, the first step in the process is to diagnose whether you have actually been penalized by Google.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Type "site:YOURSITE" in the Google search engine. If no pages show up, it means that Google has completely banned your site.
-
2
Log in to Google Webmaster Tools, click the "Your Site on the Web" option from the Dashboard menu, and select "Internal Links" from the sub-menu that pops up. Carefully inspect all your links. If your site has hundreds of pages but only five or fewer links are displayed, then your site has likely been inflicted with a penalty.
-
-
3
Type the title of a page from your website in the Google search engine, and use the use the "Next" button until you get to page 95 of the results. If the website page previously showed up on the first few pages but isn't there anymore, there is a chance that Google may have added 950 pages in front of it. This is a common penalty for using shady search engine optimization methods.
-
4
Place the address "http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=YOURSITE" into your browser, and press enter. You will be taken to a Google-based diagnostic page that displays whether your site is currently listed as suspicious.
-
5
Search for a particular page on the Google search engine by adding "&filter=0" to the end of its URL. If it doesn't show up on the regular results page but shows up with the filter, that means the page is being penalized because there is another page on the Internet with the exact same content.
-
1
References
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images
