| What is a Search Penalty ? |
What is a search penalty ?A search penalty is a handicap that a search engine applies to the position of a website in the search results. It is normally applied because the site in question has faults that mean it appears to be trying to manipulate the search results unfairly. It means that instead of appearing at #3 in the search results for a given keyword [note 1], the site appears at #33 or lower - a demotion of 30 places or more.A search penalty is also called an SP, website ban, or site deletion. Normally, search penalties are minor infractions - but a severe penalty, applied in response to serious errors, may involve the removal of the site from the SERPs (the search engine results pages). How is a search penalty caused ?There are many problems or actions that can result in a penalty. All of these faults, or deliberate manipulations, are in contradiction of the search engine concerned's Terms of Service or Quality Guidelines. These are the instructions that a search engine gives website owners as to how not to behave. Examples of such errors are:
...and hundreds of other on-site and off-site faults. In fact an honest website can fall foul of these penalties without any knowledge of it. In addition, the actions of the webhost can also have a negative effect on the site. Another cause of website bans is employing unscrupulous SEO operators who use unethical promotion methods. These 'rapid result' contractors specialise in economy, fast results. They generally work well for about six months until the search engines discover that dirty tricks have been used - at which point the website crashes out of the search results. Let us advise on how to recover from a search penalty 'White-hat' SEOEthical SEO is also termed white-hat, as opposed to black-hat. An ethical policy means the exclusive use of methods that are clearly acceptable when measured against community standards and search engine guidelines. It is a safe long-term policy, and results achieved by such methods are persistent - they do not decline.What is the effect of a search penalty ?There are several obvious results of a search penalty, which will appear very soon after an SE becomes aware that a non-compliant action was taken (though this time can vary from 2 days to 6 months). In escalating value these are:1. The Google PageRank [2] drops 1 point or more 2. The site's keywords drop 30 places in the SERPs [3], for a minor infraction 3. The site's keywords drop 90 places in the SERPs, for a major infraction 4. Some of the site's keywords are totally removed from the results 5. The site is entirely deleted from the search engine's index 1 - the site page rank may drop, and this has the effect of lowering the positions any keywords can achieve. 2, 3 - the site's keywords positions may be lowered automatically by 30 or 90 places. 4 - for serious, compounded errors, some keywords may be deleted entirely - the site cannot return for these important terms. 5 - a major spam site may be removed completely, and is invisible for that search engine. If a site has duplicate content pages, these simply have any PR removed, and the pages do not feature in the search results. This is called a filter as it simply removes any benefit, and the result is as if the page does not exist. It is not a penalty, just a filter. No more than one page on the Net should appear in the results for any piece of content - this is just logical. This factor has a severe effect on ecommerce websites, of course, as they may have hundreds of pages of duplicate product details. What is a malware penalty ?If a site hosts malware or has links to malware sites (those that actively attack visitors and attempt to load spyware etc onto their computers via weak and easily-exploited browsers), then the link is removed from their name in the SERPs. They still appear, but cannot be visited except by cut and paste of the URL. This feature is designed so that the site owners become aware of the issue, since many may be unaware that their sites have been exploited.How to remove a search penalty ?In theory this is easy, in practice it may sometimes prove difficult.
Firstly, the problem or problems must be found. This is sometimes straightforward, but where the issues are complex then experts have to be called in. If the issue was very simple then an improvement in PageRank is often seen immediately, in around three days. Otherwise, an application can be made to expedite the procedure, within the website's search engine account. This might take as little as two months, but we have seen instances where it took 18 months to have an effect, even after all problems were resolved (for a set of serious issues). What is the best way to avoid a search penalty ?
Notes [1] Keyword - a phrase that searchers typically type into the text box of a search engine, in order to find information on a subject. A keyword may be one word, but is normally a two to five-word phrase [2] PageRank is Google's site and page ranking system, that although principally designed to show a page's value to an advertiser, also has an effect on search results positions as pages with higher rank tend to place higher in the SERPs [3] SERPs, or search engine results pages, are the search results for a keyword [4] There is one exception to the 'good SEO isn't fast' rule: a brand new site gets a 'news boost' [5] from search engines, for 2 months. If you can utilise this initial free boost period correctly, you can in fact get good results early on. However, this approach is time- or resource-intensive, and therefore costs are higher. [5] A 'news boost' is the term we coined to describe the initial promotion for a site - and therefore in practice its keywords - due to the fact that a new site may be newsworthy and of current value or importance due to topicality. If such a site were to compete for position as normal, it might not be visible for several months or more, and its news value would be lost. |