Penalties in Google Search
Google and other search engines may penalize sites that are deemed low quality, spam, or are seen to be using manipulative SEO methods to rank higher. This will cause some websites to suffer in organic search results and can take time to rectify. As it is important to understand the cause of penalties and how to handle them, our SEO Office Hours notes below compile advice from Google’s “SEO Office Hours” sessions with recommendations for avoiding organic search penalties.
Sites Removed From Index After Manual Action Can Take Two Weeks to be Reindexed
When Google removes a manual action after completely removing a site from the index it can take a couple of weeks to be indexed as whole site has to be recrawled.
SERPs Usually Restored After Manual Action is Removed
When an onsite manual action has been removed, the site is reprocessed and is usually shown in the same position as it was before. However, if the reason why the site was ranking was because of something against Google’s policy (e.g. spammy links) then it may rank differently.
Review Markup Without Source Could Result in Loss of Rich Snippets
Marking up aggregate reviews without specifying the source could result in a manual action. This could result in Google dropping rich snippets in the search results for the website.
It May Take Weeks to Recover Rankings After a Manual Action Penalty
It make take some time after a manual action penalty reconsideration has been accepted to recover rankings. It can take days or weeks, particularly if the entire site has been removed from Google’s index.
Structured Data Penalties Don’t Affect Rankings
Penalties for spammy structured data only affects rich snippets, not ranking of site.
Doorway’ Pages May Result in a Manual Penalty
A large number of thin pages, with boilerplate content and nothing unique except for a few changed keywords, may be considered doorway pages which could result in a manual penalty from the spam team.
Consider Changing Interstitials to Banners Avoid a Penalty
Interstitials penalties can be avoided by changing them to a banner. Sites will still incur the penalty if there is time delay on interstitial.
Google Might Nofollow Links in Widgets and Apply a Manual Penalty to the Target Site
If Google detects a significant number of links within a widget, it will nofollow them, and may apply a manual action penalty to the site where the links point to.
Google Ignores Keyword Stuffing
Google tries to ignore keyword stuffing in content rather than apply a penalty.
Repeated DMCA Requests May Cause a Penalty
Google’s algorithms may penalise a site which gets a lot of DMCA requests and is taking content from other sources over a long period.