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Holiday Trivia: How do you know when your site is being penalized by Google?

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Submitted by Ryan Caldwell on December 23, 2007 - 11:38am in

It's that time of year when the Internet goes into a virtual slumber. But we here at Performancing wanted to keep things a little spicy (just like that spiced butter rum you're drinking). So we're offering you a trivia question to keep your mind active (and free from complete holiday comatose):

Besides getting an explicit notice in Webmaster Tools, or an email from Matt Cutts, what is the clearest sign that your blog is not in the good graces of Google?

I have one specific answer in mind. It's really obvious and gets at the core of what Google is all about.

Here's a clue: what's the most important stat chart that an SEO can look at?

First person to get my answer gets a free submission in the EatonWeb blog directory. I've told the answer to Ahmed Bilal, so the answer is locked in.

Any guesses? Post your answers in the comment section. First person to answer correctly wins.


Warning signs

Uh, you find a .mp3 file of Matt Cutts chortling "bwah ha ha ha ha?"

No? How about you find a competitor's wikipedia entry ranking for your brand name?

Actually, it's a good question. We tend to look at keyword related search traffic because it is pretty consistent for us. YMMV.

-OT

Hint: Ryan has written about it

:-)

Not on page 1 of Google SERPS?

Here's my answer: if your site/blog is not AT LEAST on the first page of Google when searching for it.

Sly from Slyvisions.com

Errr...it's not in the top

Errr...it's not in the top 100k in Alexa?

Mariella Moon
My Twitter
My StumbleUpon

searching for my-website.com

searching for my-website.com does not return links on my-website.com

no search engine links in log files

Maybe you do not see any activity from GoogleBot or search engine search results links in your log files.

A Guess

Maybe your daily Google keyword count on Google Analytics goes down to zero? A sight that I never hope to see.

Onward and Upward
--C.S. Lewis

Virginia Breeze/ http://davidnotes.com

For me....it was when I not

For me....it was when I not longer had Google search results showing up in my stats. Fortunately I was able to send an email to Google to clear up the problem.

Free Fall

When your PageRank falls faster than...um...something that falls really fast?

Christmas Eve Hint: Google

Christmas Eve Hint: Google marketshare + search referrals + Yahoo/MSN + ratios

I'm an idiot

Try two:

Search referrals vs. Time. A wise man once called it the only SEO graph that matters.

Thanks,
Rich

:-)

> A wise man once called it...

:-)

Rich...you're on the right

Rich...you're on the right track with your second guess. PageRank, of course, is irrelevant. Search referrals are critical. But I'm looking for something more specific. My second clue gives it away.

my guess.

When it gets banned from AdSense?

Hint: Combine

Combine all the hints literally into one meaningful sentence and you should have it. If I would have a page where Yahoo+MSN generate more than 15% of the incoming SE traffic I would be in trouble (regarding the original question). Just another hint...

Performancing Stats

Performancing stats is an easy way to find out if your being penalized by google. You will see that none or very few of your search engine traffic from your popular keywords are coming from Google rather Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Also the keywords that used to bring you traffic from Google will not even have your website in the SERP.

I give the prize to aedean!

I give the prize to aedean! In fact, those are the exact 2 things I look at initially. My bet is that aedean has experienced a Google penalty (like me!)

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