How Do I Recognize And Resolve A Google Penalty? - The Answer From Semalt

The declared goal of Google is to satisfy the search intention of the user in the best possible way. This means that the search engine searches and prioritizes the pages in the index according to the content that corresponds to its 'view' to the search query.

With technology (smart phones, smart devices) user behavior is also constantly evolving, which in turn leads to a constant further development of the search algorithms and then the Google guidelines for the webmasters.

For example: The giant search engine does not like trying to get fast rankings through so-called black hat SEO. Anyone who does not adhere to these guidelines will be punished and given a so-called Google penalty. The same applies to Google's updates, which inevitably keep coming back to us.

How do I recognize a Google Penalty?

You can recognize the signs of a Google Penalty by a drop in the visibility of your website and by sudden, rapid loss of the ranking of the individual URLs, keywords or even the entire website. And that without having made any major changes to your website (for example changes to the robots.txt file that controls the crawling of your site!). Then it could be a Google penalty.

In the XOVI Suite, the visibility of your site is shown by the OVI, short for the Online Value Index. If it suddenly collapses, this can be an indicator of a Google penalty.

A look at Google Analytics can also help. Because, as a rule, significant ranking losses go hand in hand with heavy traffic losses. In the event of a manual penalty, you will be informed of this in the Google Search Console.

What triggers a Google Penalty?

The reasons for a Google Penalty can be different. The majority of the penalties resulted from the major Google's updates in the recent years. The search engines are becoming more and more intelligent and are increasingly adapting to the human language and the user behavior by evolving with advancing technology. 

The last big update in this direction is BERT, which thanks to NLP has improved the search engine's language understanding by leaps and bounds since October 2019. As a result, the ranking's factors that have to deliver "good content" change and expand. If your site cannot (no longer) keep up, this can result in a Google penalty.

One example is the Panda Update, that made a short work of thin content - and thus thwarted the bill of those webmasters and SEOs who created as many URLs as possible with little content (and even less useful for the user).

Then there is Penguin Update, which puts an end to the massive link building through the link buying of irrelevant content.

Many of the Google's updates had numerous penalties because the corresponding domains had previously taken measures that no longer complied with the new Google guidelines. 

However, the users also have the option to report a page to Google as spam. In rare cases, it can also be the court's orders that result in removing of a page from the search engine's index.

How do I avoid a Google Penalty?

The following always applies: Keep up to date with the developments in the search engines optimization. Find out about the major Google's updates, because it will be about the milestones in the further development of Google algorithms. Very important: Make sure that you follow the Google's guidelines for the webmasters regularly! In addition, you can do the following:

1. Avoid buying or selling links

Link building is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization. For a long time, the following was true: the more a domain received the backlinks, the better it was - regardless of whether these links made any thematic sense or not. So the backlinks were sold and bought massively. However, this violates the Google's guidelines and so the links that were once useful from an SEO point of view became harmful backlinks. It is recommended to rely on links with added value for the user.

SEO tip

Use the XOVI Disavow Tool to examine your backlinks for its quality and to remove the harmful links.

2. Avoid over-optimizing your website

Don't overdo it with the pure SEO measures. Because Google doesn't want you to optimize your site for the search engines, but for the user. Or to put it another way: Google wants you to primarily operate UEO - User Experience Optimization. Although this is not an established term, it best fits to the focus. Too many measures that are clearly aimed at the improvement of your rankings are not welcomed.

3. Use different anchor texts for your links

Make sure you vary your anchor text and you don't always use the same hard and optimized anchor text for the keywords or a URL. The hard link texts, focused on the keywords may not give the user enough background information about the content behind the link (UEO!) and are immensely popular with the search engines because it is simply unnatural.

SEO tip

You don't have to laboriously search through your anchor texts, you can have it displayed very conveniently in the XOVI Suite's link tool.

4. Avoid duplicate content and poor quality content

The content is king - but not a twin. Do not just copy the content of the others (that would also be plagiarism and can cause legal trouble) or your own. This is especially true for the shop pages for the product variations. Yes, it is troublesome. But the user notices it and he quickly moves to where he also gets added value in terms of content instead of a muddle. The search engine notices it all but doesn't know which product variation you want to rank with. This can lead to the cannibalization keyword

SEO tip

If it is impossible to avoid the fact that the content will be very similar (e.g. product variations), then work with canonical tags. This will mark one of your product variants as the original and refer to this URL for all the other variants. Then the search engine doesn't stumble and doesn't have to ask itself which of these variations is important.

The canonical tags can thus lead to more stable rankings: You only have one URL in the SERPs, you are no longer competing with yourself and the search engine does not have to constantly test which variant works better in which position.

5. Make sure your site is optimized for the mobile devices

You probably know it: the cell phone is pulled out to search for the nearest restaurant. On the way there too, and on the train you read the news or find out about the topics that interest you on the mobile phone. Please make sure that the users can move around your website with their mobile phones without any problems. The Mobile First Update from Google, which started in March 2018, also shows how important a mobile-optimized site is. The Google Core Update from March 2019 also indicates that the mobile accessibility (together with the user experience) is becoming increasingly important.

In order to make your website fit for the Mobile First, the loading time has to be fast. A common obstacle for pages to load fast is image files that are too large or the websites' complete loading. Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are two ways in which you can well implement the Mobile First.

What types of penalties are there?

When it comes to the penalties by Google, a distinction is made primarily between the penalties caused by the algorithm and the manual penalties. The former is imposed by the algorithm if it detects the violations of Google's guidelines while crawling your page. These penalties can be against:
Judge Points 1 to 4 break down the penalties by the algorithm. Point 5 then goes into more details on the manual penalties.

1. Keyword level

A keyword penalty means that you will be banned from the top positions in the SERPs for a specific keyword or a few more. The rankings for the other keywords are not affected, only the individual ones.

If your domain has been number 1 or on the first page for a specific keyword for weeks or months, your position for this keyword suddenly deteriorates drastically. Often the domain suddenly crashes in the search results to page 3 or 4 of the Google search results page or even further down.

2. URL or directory level

With this penalty, a special directory or a special URL of a domain is affected, regardless of which keywords it ranks for. It may be well that a subpage of a domain ranks for several keywords. This is even very likely with the extensive content. If this subpage is penalized, all the rankings for this URL would be penalized. The subpage or an entire directory would either be removed from the Google index or only be found very far back in the results.

3. Domain or subdomain level

The penalty is the same as for the penalty at the directory or the URL level, but for the entire domain or sub domain it remains in the index; and the URLs can still be found via a site query, but your rankings are lost. Google users will no longer be able to find your website. All the positions on Google are gone. The OVI value in the XOVI Suite would then show the value zero and no more ranked keywords.

4. De-indexing

Deindexing (also called delisting) is the toughest Google penalty. The domain with all its sub-pages is completely removed from the index and deleted from the search engines' database. A site query would then show that no pages can be displayed. See the following example:

5. Manual action by the Google spam team

First, check whether your page has been penalized by a Google algorithm or by a manual measure.

The difference is: You will not be informed of an automatic penalty, but a manual one.

It is therefore important for all SEO to create its domains in the Search Console. There you will also be informed about the manual penalties. In addition, there are of course more reasons to set up the Search Console.

You would receive the message of a manual penalty in the Search Console mailbox and under "Search queries"> "Manual measures":
Unfortunately, Google does not exactly reveal in the notifications which measures must be taken to have the penalty lifted. However, the spam team gives clues, for example when it comes to unnatural link building. Up to three example links are given that led to the penalty. However, this is not a complete list, only examples.

The most common causes of the manual penalties are, for example, the unnatural backlinks, the doorway pages, the cloaking and spam.

SEO tip

Of course you can link the Search Console with the XOVI Suite , then you have all the data at a glance.

How long does a penalty last?

Here, too, a distinction must be made between an algorithmic penalty and a manual measure.

The algorithmic penalty is lifted the moment the reasons for the penalty cannot be found after a crawl by Google. The algorithm then no longer reacts to the punishable signals and usually releases the domain completely from the penalty. The loss of ranking is usually fully compensated for.

In the case of a manual penalty, a request for a re-examination, a so-called Reconsideration Request, must be submitted to Google. This works via the Search Console. There you can explain what measures you have taken to eliminate the rule violations complained about. As soon as the request is made, the Google's team evaluates these requests and decides whether or not to cancel the Google penalty. There is no guarantee that revocation will take place and is at the sole discretion of Google. If the first application is not canceled, you can always submit a new application. However, this only has a higher chance of success if further measures have been taken by the webmaster.

Google explains the process of applying for a re-examination in their Webmaster's Guide.

How can I fix a Google Penalty?

It doesn't really matter whether your domain has lost its visibility through a manual measure or through a penalty from the Google algorithm. It is now important that you remove the penalty promptly in order to quickly counteract the further losses in terms of rankings, traffic and of course sales.

To fix a Google Penalty, you first need to find out what is the most likely the cause of the penalty. In the case of a manual action by Google, you will be given instructions on this in the Search Console.

In the case of the algorithmic penalties, you won't get any information. So you have to dig out the SEO Sherlock in you. Check whether the recent (perhaps long outdated) SEO measures that have been carried out, violated the Google Quality Guidelines and thus make the sirens of the past Google's updates sound.

If that's not the case, then you should check to see if there was a recent Google update that sent your website nosedive. That was, for example, in the summer of 2018 in the so-called 'Medic Update' or recently in the Core Update in March 2019.

SEO tip

The OVI of the XOVI Suite also shows you milestones in the timeline, which mark confirmed, major Google updates. This makes it relatively easy to see whether there was a Google update at the time your visibility fell and what it is about.

However, it is important to keep a cool head when using the Google's Updates and wait a few days to see whether your rankings catch up on its own.


A penalty by Google can cause a massive damage. If the visibility of the pages in the search results pages decreases or disappears, few of the  potential customers will find your website. The result: new orders drop or collapse, and sales fail. Especially when a large amount of traffic is coming from Google, the effects can be dramatic. 

The good news: you can get out of both an algorithmic penalty and a manual spam measure - at least most of the time. Google doesn't give a guarantee, but we have seen many domains that have recovered from a penalty.


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