A Google penalty is a measure taken by Google in which a website is ranked significantly lower in the search results or partly removed from the index altogether. This happens when a site breaches the Google Webmaster Guidelines or tries to influence rankings through manipulative SEO methods.
A penalty of this kind can be applied automatically by the Google algorithm or imposed manually by a team of Google staff. In both cases, the visibility of the affected website in the search results often drops sharply.
How does a Google penalty come about?
In many cases a penalty is triggered when Google acts against spam or manipulative search engine optimisation. Typical causes are artificial link building or low quality content.
Common reasons are:
- unnatural or paid backlinks
- keyword spam or over-optimised content
- hidden text or links
- automatically generated content
- heavily copied or very thin content (”thin content”)
Why a penalty is a problem for SEO
A penalty can have a massive impact on a website. Organic visitor numbers often collapse within a short time because pages no longer appear in the top positions.
To restore visibility, the causes have to be analysed and fixed. In the case of manual actions, a reconsideration request to Google can then be submitted so that the site is assessed again.