Have you been Penalized by Google?
by Frank Jovine on 10/11/2009 in Google
There are many websites and blogs that are banned from Google’s index and the owners of these websites or blogs have no idea that they’re in the penalty box. If your website or blog is penalized, you need to find out why it’s penalized and address the issues.
Tools to check if your website or blog is banned by Google
- http://seopenalty.com – They provide a scoring system from 0 to 10; zero being the best score and obviously 10 being the worst. Unfortunately, the website doesn’t provide a break down of its scoring system.
- http://www.iwebtool.com/google_banned
- http://www.selfseo.com/google_ban_tool.php
How to Avoid being Penalized by Google
Practicing “white hat” SEO will prevent your website from being penalized by Google. So what is White Hat SEO? White Hat SEO methods are the approved, natural ways of building traffic to your website which are well document in the Google Webmaster Guidelines. These techniques follow the rules and regulation of search engines.
Blackhat SEO Methods
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don’t send automated queries to Google.
- Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
- Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
- Avoid bad neighbors – These are sites linking to your site that are categorized as malicious and or spam websites.
What can you do if you have incurred a penalty?
First off, you need to make the necessary corrections that your blog or websites need. Once you finish all the necessary changes, send a request for reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools or contacting Google support at http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?
Related articles – http://www.techjaws.com/how-to-avoid-being-penalized-by-google/
iphone developers
Oct 12th, 2009
Great tool, I was really searching for these type of tools. Nice
HART (1-800-HART)
Oct 12th, 2009
Just out of curiosity – must all the sites show the same results?
I can place a domain or two that conflicts on the three sections. For instance, a domain with a high penalty of 10 seems is not banned in google .. and is indexed quite well in google.
Mathdelane
Oct 12th, 2009
These are very helpful resources worth bookmarking. I find it really hard to get back on track once a site is penalized by Google but certainly doing what’s right and fair wouldn’t cause any harm.
Frank J
Oct 12th, 2009
Mathdelane,
Thank you for the positive feedback and we look forward to reading more of your comments in the future.
YourSEOSucks.com
Oct 12th, 2009
There is a big difference between being banned (de-listed) and being penalized. It’s easy to see whether or not you’ve been banned from a search engine. I have seen sites that are penalized, yet they still have hundreds or thousands of pages indexed. It’s annoying when that happens. Which leads to my point: the seopenalty.com website is most likely unreliable at best. I typed in yahoo.com, and it returned “Slight Penalty (3/10)”. WTF?!?! Yahoo is being penalized by Google?! I’m highly interested in a tool that can tell me how penalized my site is, but what are the criteria? How does seopenalty.com know Google’s various penalty levels? For all I know, that site could be dialed in to Google’s super-secret penalty system data, but where’s the proof? I’d pay money for that service if there was some way to verify it. But for now, I’m not sure I trust it. Regardless, it is good to know that people are out there creating tools like that.
Frank J
Oct 12th, 2009
YourSEOSucks,
I agree on the scoring with seopenalty.com. I indicated that there was no documentation that supports the actual scoring, thus it seems not to be of any value.
See you Wednesday!!!
YourSEOSucks.com
Oct 12th, 2009
Maybe the person behind that site has managed to somehow figure out Google’s penalty system. Maybe that’s why there is not a details page. Maybe that’s why it’s all secretive. The truth is out there! Conspiracies rule!
Frank J
Oct 12th, 2009
YSS,
You may be on to something. How could we get the truth out of the site owner? One must come up with an idea.
americo
Oct 13th, 2009
Google is fast becoming the priest class of our modern era. we look at them for guidance and we fear their scorn and punishment. I for one am completely baffled by their methods. I keep disappearing from their search results every 3 weeks, and then suddenly, as a stroke of magic, I fall back into their grace. Pff….
Ok, enough ranting, time to pray for my new overlords
Rockr
Oct 14th, 2009
Nice tools..
helped me to analyze my work all together.
Thank you
Frank J
Oct 14th, 2009
Rockr,
Glad you liked the post. Thanks for the positive feedback!
How to Get good backlink
Oct 14th, 2009
i have tried the seopenalty.com and my blog is at 0 point of penalty
but i read thread on digitalpoint forums and many digitalpoint forum member told that seopenalty is a piece of crab tool which is not legitimate.
any idea about this?
Frank J
Oct 14th, 2009
I heard a few negative opinions about seopenalty.com, but I have listed a few sites that provide this information that have good reputation.
Eric D. Greene
Oct 16th, 2009
Thank you – the article is extremely timely :/
Frank J
Oct 16th, 2009
Eric,
Thank you and I look forward to many more comments from you.
Telesales
Oct 19th, 2009
Thank God that I haven’t been penalized by google! Google has been very good as a SEO. It’s very simple, just follow the SEO rules and guidelines then you’ll not be blocked nor penalized by them.
Frank J
Oct 19th, 2009
You are 100% right. Just read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and you will be fine.
Ricky
Oct 29th, 2009
This tools are worth checking. Sometime new bloggers do mistakes. I do follow white SEO so I am not worried about penalty. Just checked my domain and it has 0 penalty