A Google penalty refers to the negative impact on a website’s search rankings due to updates to Google’s search algorithms or manual review. Google continually updates its search algorithms to provide the highest quality search results. Sites that employ questionable strategies to boost their search engine ranking, such as link schemes, keyword stuffing, cloaking, sneaky redirects, and others, are likely to get penalized by Google. This can drastically drop a website’s visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs), which can severely impact web traffic and online business.
For example, in April 2012, Google rolled out its “Penguin” algorithm update, designed to penalize sites violating the Google Webmaster Guidelines, particularly those using manipulative tactics to achieve high rankings. Sites observed participating in link schemes discovered their search engine rankings had fallen.
Penalties can also be imposed due to manual action. If Google’s spam team determines a site is not in compliance with Google’s quality guidelines, they can manually penalize the site, resulting in reduced rankings or even removal from Google’s index.
Importantly, Google differentiates between ‘manual actions’ and ‘algorithmic penalties’. A manual action comes directly from a Google employee’s investigation, while an algorithmic penalty is an automatic adjustment made by Google’s algorithms to downgrade the rankings of certain sites.
Penalties can have a serious impact on site traffic and hence business. For instance, eBay reportedly experienced a significant drop in traffic in 2014 due to a manual penalty imposed by Google, which apparently led to a loss of around $200 million in revenue.
The good news is that a site can recover from a Google penalty. The first step is to understand the reason for the penalty, which can be found in Google’s Search Console under the ‘Security & Manual Actions’ tab. Then, necessary corrections in compliance with Google guidelines should be made, and a reconsideration request should be filed.
This answer is based on a variety of sources, including the official Google Webmaster Guidelines (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide), the Google Webmaster Central Blog (https://developers.google.com/search/blog/), and a study by Search Engine Journal (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-lost-200-million/232031/), where the case of eBay is detailed.
In summary, a Google penalty is a significant decrement in search rankings inflicted on sites that violate Google’s guidelines. This can be due to either automated algorithm updates or manual review by Google’s spam team. Avoiding these penalties involves adhering to Google’s quality guidelines, and recovery involves rectification of the violation and submitting a reconsideration request.
