How to Diagnose a Possible Google Penalty

Hey we have been working on a site for a while and our rankings got demolished on Sept 18th 2012 which is the same time as a google panda refresh so we think we got penalized for something but are not sure what...

We have had no messages on webmaster tools and dont have too many backlinks. We have never used any software to generate back links but have posted backlinks on a few different sites but nothing spammy. Anybody have any advice on how to diagnose this?

Thanks

Is it indexed in Google?

There is no 100% sure way but a very good indicator of penalty would be if you lost rankings during a specific Panda or Penguin update. Also if you search the first paragraph text of your website on G0ogle and your site is not ranked 1st or even second and most likely not even on page 1 (or anywhere in top 10 pages) then it a very good bet you got the Panda penalty. Best way to fix this is to start a new site immediately on a new non penalised domain and create fresh high quality and unique content.

Its easier to start from scratch and rank again than to waste months trying to figure out and fix a penalty. Ideally keep the existing site and try to 'recover' if it had some value but your main focus should be on the new site you build and learn from your mistakes and not buy cheap but unique content but spend a bit more on high quality genuine native English writer content.

We are still ranked for the name of our site and stuff like that but keywords that we used to rank on page 2-3 for are now like page 60 or unranked. It happened on Sept 18th and that is the same day as a google panda refresh. How do you diagnose the issue and find what it is that google is not liking?

zfa32937 said:

We are still ranked for the name of our site and stuff like that but keywords that we used to rank on page 2-3 for are now like page 60 or unranked. It happened on Sept 18th and that is the same day as a google panda refresh. How do you diagnose the issue and find what it is that google is not liking?

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i believe i already answered your question and you did not say as i asked, if you copy and paste the first paragraph of text of your site into the G0oogle search...then does it come up? If not, then combined with the fact you lost rankings on the same day as the Panda refresh then it is a safe bet it is the Panda penalty and already since Sept last year so best thing to do is to start with a fresh new site. Alternatively you can send a reconsideration request to Google stating the above and hope they give you an answer but imo all this is a waste of time. First search the first paragraph of text and see if it comes up or not is the first step. (NOT search your site name). There is so much help you can get here if you cannot follow simple instructions. Cheers.

I believe you are victim of a change in algorithm. Penalties, do expire after 1 or 3 months. If you were penalized you would have observed a surge in traffic back to your old levels after lets say 3 months. After that, penalized sites are most likely subject to manual review. If you pass review numbers should stay up. If reviewer slaps you again, numbers drop down again after a couple of days.

I too owned a site before which lost ranking from page 1 to page 20 and above that was the time of google update and i never regained my position once google devalued your website its not worth woking with that website anymore even after doing hardcore seo to rank that again if you gained your previous spot in a month or so then its ok else get a new domain start working with that you can consider to set a redirect to your old site..

infoasian said:

I believe you are victim of a change in algorithm. Penalties, do expire after 1 or 3 months. If you were penalized you would have observed a surge in traffic back to your old levels after lets say 3 months. After that, penalized sites are most likely subject to manual review. If you pass review numbers should stay up. If reviewer slaps you again, numbers drop down again after a couple of days.

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is this something you read or personal experience. Out of all my penalised sites over the years i would say only 1 recovered al by itself. The rest never came back...even after over a year. What i always do now is just delete the old site and rebuild immediately and my income has never been better. Do NOT get too attached to any website as they can all be replaced unless it s a huge brand project/website then in which case you need to stay far away from low quality content or paid links.

It's my own experience. I have a site that keeps moving up in serp traffic 6 fold every 3 months or so after I make changes, but it gets hammered down a week later.

In your case it could well be that large parts of your senior backlinks were devalued. That could cause the site to stay down for very, very long time. While those links stil exists, they no longer prvide the juice they used to.

bestmate said:

is this something you read or personal experience. Out of all my penalised sites over the years i would say only 1 recovered al by itself. The rest never came back...even after over a year. What i always do now is just delete the old site and rebuild immediately and my income has never been better. Do NOT get too attached to any website as they can all be replaced unless it s a huge brand project/website then in which case you need to stay far away from low quality content or paid links.

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Subster shared this site recently. Obviously I keep on top of sites that are important to me but this was interesting for checking sites I was neglecting

http://www.sistrix.de/google-updates/