What is Google Penalty?

[shoppingswag]

What is Google Penalty?

[softwaretesting]

If your website traffic suddenly drops and you see a corresponding decline in rankings, there is a good possibility that you are on the receiving end of a Google penalty. Google reported in 2014 that over 400,000 manual actions are taken against websites every month by their web spam team (1), and that's really only a fraction of the total number. Many other websites are penalized when Google rolls out new algorithmic updates to Penguin or Panda.

A sudden, unexplained drop in rankings can be disastrous for retailers, as it can prevent visitors from finding and purchasing your products, but you can recover from a Google penalty. The first thing you need to do is find out what the cause is.

[RH-Calvin]

A Google penalty is the negative impact on a website's search rankings based on updates to Google's search algorithms or manual review. The penalty can be a by-product of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO techniques.

[sinelogixtech]

A Google Penalty is the negative effect on a website’s search rankings based on the updates to Google’s search algorithms and/or manual review.

It can be an unfortunate malfunction of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO techniques.

[Servers Base]

A Google penalty is the negative impact on a website's search rankings based on updates to Google's search algorithms or manual review. The penalty can be a by-product of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO techniques.

[pharmasecure]

You're probably familiar with penalties in professional sports. If a player does something unsportsmanlike, or violates the rules of the game, they are often penalized for their actions. Depending on how severe the infringement is, they may even be removed from the game, or suspended from playing for a period of time.

graph showing google penalty
Google penalties are very similar to sports penalties. At their core, they're designed to punish websites that have done something wrong. These penalties aren't always handed out manually, and they may impact websites built by those who had no idea what they did wrong, but they can still greatly impact a site's performance in search results—and beyond.

[Amitkumar]

What is Google Penalty?

A Google penalty is the negative impact on a website's search rankings based on updates to Google's search algorithms or manual review.