S.e.A.rCh

How to Determine a Search Engine Penalty

SEO chatter was awash with talk of a GoCompare penalty last week.  I didn’t think it was a penalty, and posted my thoughts over at Patrick Altoft’s SEO blog.  Here I’m going to talk a little more about why I don’t think it was a penalty, and how to determine whether you have a search engine penalty.

Search engines, particularly Google, are always tweaking their algorithm.  They apply layer upon layer of functionality on top of the existing algorithm, and each of these layers comes with lots of nobs and dials that can be tuned according to performance.  Every time they tune their algorithm, there are always some unfortunate side-effects which effect SERPs in ways they weren’t intended to.  For example, the Google Sandbox was, for a long time, dispelled as a myth by Googlers, until there was some confirmation that it was most likely a side-effect of another update Google had rolled out.

“What’s a sandbox, Matt?”

Some people have asked, “does this apply to newer sites?” Essentially, the way to think about it is, around 2003 Google switched to a new method of updating its index. Before that we had monthly Google dances. So as a result, new data is always being folded into the index. It’s not like there was one pivotal moment when anyone can say, “Hah! This is the change!” In fact, even at different data centers we have different binaries, different algorithms, different types of data always being tested.

“I think a lot of what’s perceived as the sandbox is artifacts where, in our indexing, some data may take longer to be computed than other data.”

Quote via http://www.seobook.com/google-ranking-6-penalty-filter

Similarly for the +5 penalty, when many webmasters saw their #1 rankings drop to 6th place.  Again, for a long time Google denied this, until someone confirmed that it was another unexpected side effect of another new Google feature.

When Barry asked me about “position 6″ in late December, I said that I didn’t know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We’re in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.

In general if you think a site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request in our webmaster console to ask Google to take another look at the site.

Quote via http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016107.html

So what might a webmaster conclude if their website was to be effected by either of these?  They’d probably think that their website was being penalised for something.  What normally ensues is someone spending a lot of time trying to work out what’s happened, when often, the correct thing to do is chill out, do nothing, and wait for Google to correct itself.  This was highlighted by the GoCompare case last week – everyone and their sons jumped on it (including myself), tried to work out what was going on, blogged about it, Tweeted about it, but following the weekend, they were back in Google.  What a waste of time!!!

My personal view is that this wasn’t a penalty – it looks more like a blip in Google’s algorithm.  In hindsight, the correct thing for us all to do as mature SEOs is chill out, leave it a week or two, to acknowledge that these things happen, and then move on.

So what is the correct course of action when / if your website suffers drops within Google.  I’d advise people to do the following:

1. Check out the latest Google SERP changes thread on Webmasterworld.  Latest is here.
2. Are other webmasters experiencing similar issues happening at the same time?
3. If your website is squeaky clean, file for reinclusion, and then sit back and wait for Google to roll back their algorithm changes – it’s likely an issue at their end
4. If your website isn’t squeaky clean, I still wouldn’t hastily make changes.  It still might be an error on Google’s part.  All too often webmasters start cleaning up dupe content, rewriting page titles etc… immediately after an update, when this might not even be causing the problem.  Sit back and keep on an eye on Webmasterworld – perhaps get in touch with other effected webmasters and start looking for commonalities between websites effected.
5. If after 2 weeks you’re still not back in, review your change log.  Have you done anything that may have upset Google?
6. From personal recent experience, I generally notice major SERP changes occuring within the last 7-10 days of each month.  This is going to be difficult to do, but there’s a possibility that you may not be as fortunate as GoCompare, and you may need to wait a whole month to have any issue resolved
7. If after 1 month the situation has still not resolved itself, pull the website apart (both onsite and offsite).   Are you really squeaky clean?  Perhaps now’s the time to fess up to Google, undo what you’ve done, and file for reinclusion.

SEOMoz also has this great penalty flow diagram that provides more info on diagnosing a penalty.  The only change I’d make to this is that there should be some time element included – if you’ve seen you’re site drop out at 9am, and you’re using this flow diagram to diagnose at 10am, then the conclusions could be misleading.  At the end of the day we’re working with an algorithm here, and it’s certainly not inffallible – we just need to keep reminding ourselves that and not jump on the “outing bandwagon” every time someone suffers an algorithm blip!

Tags: gocompare, google algorithm, penalty, sandbox