In simple terms, a Google Penalty is a punishment against a website for violating the guidelines of the Webmaster. In this article, I will be discussing Google penalties and the most common types of them.
Keep reading till the end to find out more information on Google Penalty!
About Google Penalty
A Google Penalty is essentially a manual action that can be considered as a sort of negative effect that gets inflicted on the rankings of a website. These are done so based on Google search algorithm updates.
The penalties are decided based on when a human reviewer decides that a particular website does not comply with the Google Search Essentials.
This can happen due to any kind of spam, keyword stuffing, or even the insertion of suspicious links.
Reasons For Getting A Google Penalty
Here is a list of reasons why your website might get a Google penalty:
Sneaky Redirects
Sneaky redirecting or Cloaking refers to the act of showing different pages to the users than what is shown on Google.
These redirects take the users to different pages than what is actually what is shown on Google. This action violates the guidelines of the Webmaster.
Mobile Redirects
All of the pages of a website redirect to some content that is not visible to the Google crawlers. This also leads to a direct violation of the guidelines of the Webmaster.
After Google discovers this, they may take a manual action which would typically involve the removal of the URLs – right from the search index.
Hidden Images
If you show different content to the users than what is originally there in your content, that would also count as a violation. If you provide images that are – different from the image served, hidden by another image on top of it, or even redirect the users away from an image.
Keyword Stuffing
If Google discovers that your website is using keyword stuffing or hidden text then that would lead to your site getting a penalty as well. This penalty comes in either of two forms: Site-wide matches or partial matches.
If you are faced with the former then that would affect your whole website. On the other hand, if you are faced with the latter then you will face a penalty for only some of the portions of your site.
Spam
If your site overtly engages in the usage of spammy techniques – including the use of scraped content, AI gibberish, or cloaking – then that would be considered a violation of the Webmaster guidelines.
Content With No Added Value
There are many pages that post shallow or low-quality content – and this triggers the Google penalty. If you post either of these content types then you will be faced with:
- blog posts that are of low quality
- scraped content from the other websites
- AI-generated content
- doorway pages
- affiliate pages that have no unique information
This penalty may come in either of two forms – site-wide or partial penalties.
Unnatural Links From The Site
Google is relying more and more on algorithms these days, and very less on manual actions when it comes to handling spammy links.
If you get involved in some link schemes or even purchasing of schemes then that is also a clear violation of the Webmaster guidelines.
A great tip would be to build links in the correct and ethical way so that you do not get faced with any violations.
Adult Themed Content
Google openly restricts adult-themed content from appearing in the “Discover” section. This auto indicates a ban on exploitive materials, nudity, and content that are sexually suggestive.
An exception from this would be content that is related to sex or human education.
Hateful Content
If you post content that promotes and condones violence then that is strictly prohibited as well. Posting content that targets people based on their disability, gender, age or nationality can lead to you getting this penalty.
FAQs
Here is a list of the following penalties that your site is liable to get at any point in time when it discovers that there is a violation of Webmaster guidelines:
- How long does a Google penalty last?
A: The minimum amount of time for which a penalty lasts is about 30 days. If your site has done a more serious offense than that then it is going to last for more than that.
- How to check if my site has gotten a penalty check?
A: If your site has gotten a penalty check then, you can go to PRchecker.info and then enter your domain name in the search bar, and hit enter.
You will see a page rank that gets displayed which you can use for comparing the past rankings. Lower rankings would mean that you have a penalty to compete with.
- What is the rank penalty?
A: The rank penalty refers to a decrease in the rankings in the search engine which can occur due to the violation of the search engine guidelines – prevalent in black hat SEO practices.
- Can you recover from a Google penalty?
A: There are penalties that you can’t recover from, while there are also ones that are easily recoverable from. The maximum number of days it would take for a site to recover from a Google penalty is about 30 days.
To Wrap It Up!
Websites must practice all the ethical ways of ranking their content. If you practice unethical means to lure in traffic then Google will take note of it – and worse of all, your website might get a permanent ban.
That was all for information regarding what Google Penalty is about. Thank you for reading up till here. I hope you found the information helpful.
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