How do I know if I have been hit with a Google penalty
-
How can you tell if you have been hit by the Panda update as I have a Page rank 3 Homepage, several 100 other pages but no page rank is flowing through to these pages they are all zero?
Thanks
-
PageRank is a pretty outdated way of looking at a page's worth, especially because it's updated irregularly, and often fudged / inaccurate. Google realised a while ago that people used PageRank as a metric to buy and sell links, meaning that them making it very accurate was helping fund an industry they very much didn't like.
That said, 2.5 years with no internal PR showing up on any URL seems slightly odd. Do the pages show decent Moz metrics, like Page Authority?
Does the site sit on HTTPS URLs exclusively? At least a little while ago, that used to stop toolbar PR from showing up but it didn't mean that pages wouldn't rank.
It's also possible that the site receives few or no links from elsewhere, meaning that there is not much authority to be passed through the site from the home page or any other target page. Does this seem likely to you, looking at the site's links? As others have said, there could also be internal linking problems that halt the flow of authority, but 2.5 years is a while to show no internal tbPR whatsoever.
-
Thanks for the replies
Sorry I dont think I have been very clear the pages have not been assigned pagerank
The domain 2.5 years old with several 100 pages
-
Could be your internal structure. Has anything changed or are you just not raising in the search engines as quickly as you would like? Judging by your earlier followup it sounds like more of the later, which would indicate you just need more good links flowing to your sub-pages.
As David said your backlinks probably all point to your homepage so that would be natural for it to rank much higher.
-
The first place to look at is your backlinks. If they all point at your homepage, its natural that it will have a higher pagerank than the subpages.
I doubt it was hit with a penalty, unless you have noticed a large drop in rankings. When you are hit with a manual penalty, Google will notify you via webmaster tools, so be sure to check that or if you dont have an account, set one up.
Also, how is the page interlinking set up? Do you constantly promote linking to your subpages using well placed anchor text? If the home page does not link to other pages, could be Google is not seeing them. Does the site have a sitemap submitted in webmaster tools?
-
Are you just looking at pagerank? Page rank doesn't tend to get update very often (once/twice a year ish) so i wouldn't use it as a metric try Moz's domain & page authority if you are concerned about flow.
quick one here are some of the previous updates to show you:
** Previous Updates**
- 5/6 December 2013
- 4 February 2013
- 7 November 2012
- 2 August 2012
- 2 May 2012
- 7 February 2012
- 7 November 2011
-
Hi Guys Thanks for the reply I have run site:ourdomain and the correct number of pages are showing, I have also checked the robot.txt is fine and cannot see any cliff like drop in analytics? Thanks
-
Robert gave some great advice, you can also check here - http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change and see if you have a large cliff like drop in Google analytics. It also depends how long your site has been active etc. as many people cry wolf with updates but it may be other things like robots.txt as Robert mentioned.
-
Have you tried checking what pages you have cached in Google? search site:yourdomain.com and see what results come up. This should give you a good idea if your site is indexed ok. Also check your robots.txt isn't set to no follow.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Analytics Tagging
Hi. I'm trying to figure out a solution to three questions one of my current clients has asked me in regards to Google Analytics tagging, and I'm unsure how to respond. Can anyone help? See below the questions, 1. In Google Acquisition > Overview, their paid media is reporting as "Other". They do not run any Google paid ads. They only run Facebook paid ads. Is there a way to update the source so that it says "Paid" versus "Other" within the default channel? The current solution was advised to create a channel group that the client has to then tick on overtime they want to see this data with the correct labeling. They would prefer to see it in the default. Is it just a matter of going into the *default channel, choosing the "Paid" option, and then specifying the source/medium that contains Facebook, CPC, or referral to be categorized under this channel? Or is it something else? *Aware that changes to the Default Channel are permanent changes and will change how new traffic is classified. 2. In Google Acquisition > Overview > Referral, the clients website is showing up as a referring domain, both the TLD and the subdomain. My understanding is that it should actually be reporting under the "Direct" channel. How do I correct this? Is it just a matter of updating the Direct channel to include those domains? Or do I need to update the settings? The domain's www. http: all 301 redirect to their https://domain.com and https://subdomain.domain.com. Within settings it has been specified as www.domain.com and URL is http:// - also noticed that Bot Filtering has not been checked, assuming this could mess up the analytic data if not define? Do you know? 3. Audience segmentation > The client wants to be able to define it's audience by shopping intent and informational intent. Is there a clear way to do this, for example, by keywords used, e.g. buy, product name, entry (shopping intent), versus e.g. non-purchase intent, entry to the blog, length of time on site (info intent). Would be happy to have a conversation about the last question, since I'm conscious that there are probably multiple ways to define this - thanks. To the group, thank you for readying my questions and helping me with these solutions - your time is appreciated and valued. Sincerely, Amanda
Search Behavior | | AmandaValle.Digital0 -
How does Google treat significant content changes to web pages and how should I flag them as such?
I have several pages (~30) that I have plans to overhaul. The URLs will be identical and the theme of the content will be the same (still talking about the same widgets, using the same language) but I will be adding a lot more useful information for users, specifically including things that I think will help with my fairly high bounce rate on these pages. I believe the changes will be significant enough for Google to notice, I was wondering if it goes "this is basically a new page now, I will treat it as such and rank accordingly" or does it go "well this content was rubbish last time I checked so it is probably still not great". My second question is, is there a way I can get Google to specifically crawl a page it already knows about with fresh eyes? I know in the Search Console I can ask Google to index new pages, and I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index. Some background The reason I'm doing this is because I noticed when these pages first ranked, they did very well (almost all first / second page for the terms I wanted). After about two weeks I've noticed them sliding down. It doesn't look like the competition is getting any better so my running theory is they ranked well to begin with because they are well linked internally and the content is good/relevant and one of the main things negatively impacting me (that google couldn't know at the time) is bounce rate.
Search Behavior | | tosbourn0 -
Vanish from google after choosing preferred domain and fixing 40 duplicate meta descriptions?
I recently followed 2 Google webmaster suggestions to clean up the on page SEO for our site. I chose a preferred domain 2 weeks ago(to www.website.com) and fixed the duplicate meta descriptions that our CMS was setting to unique and more natural descriptions for each page. I did that 3 days ago. Webmaster tools still says they are duplicates because it hasn't crawled the whole site yet. We have been fortunate enough to have some of our blog posts be covered by yahoo.com, cnet.com, huffingtonpost.com, gizmodo.com, etc. That is some major backlink juice and, as recently as 2 weeks ago, our website would be the #1 result when searching Google for "ourwebsite.com exact title of very popular blog post". Now it is on the 3rd page, and the top results are the websites that linked to our blog post. So....what gives? Is there a specific area I should look at? Our should I wait for Google to fully index our whole site now that changes have been made? It should be noted that our rankings have stayed the same in yahoo and bing. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Search Behavior | | garyislearning0 -
Google PageRank and google keyword ranks
Hi, I manage around 13 Clients for SEO and this last two weeks i have been having problems with google keyword ranking some of my clients went down almost 40 positions for some keywords other 15 other stayed the same and some just went down 1 or 5 positions. Somebody know what is happening with google? is it shuffling around positions of people? Any advice or how you do your SEO I'm willing to work together and share experiences and tactics on SEO to people that also share with me in order to build more strategies on this amazing market. Thanks.
Search Behavior | | computernc0 -
Google De-Indexed Our SIte for Branded Terms?
Hello all, As of 10am Pacific on September 12th, 2013, my team has noticed that our site, www.wirelessemporium.com, does not show up on the first 5 or 6 pages of SERPs for branded terms like "wireless emporium." We have not received any messages from Google via Webmaster Tools regarding this. Major activity that we've been doing to our site is updating content, meta tags, and h1 tags, along with removing/301 redirecting certain pages that did not meet Google quality guidelines. We've also been purging our backlink portfolio of toxic links and URLs, both manually and through the disavow tool. No blackhat has been done to this site for a very long time (more than 8 months now). One thing to note is that we did have a manual spam penalty placed on us back in July of 2012, it expired in early August of 2013 after a reconsideration request was submitted, and a 2nd manual spam penalty was placed on us again later that month. We are submitting a 2nd reconsideration request this Monday. Could this or the recent Panda update have anything to with this? We are very much in need of opinions as to why this is happening to our site. 5adbd14a31de3a78b998df94f0b6d2be
Search Behavior | | eugeneku0 -
Google indexing PDF's
Hello, We work heavily on E-commerce SEO and recently Google has started to index PDF pages (Datasheets) added to the product pages instead of the actual product pages. Has anyone else noticed this at all? Seems to have got worse over the last month or so. Thanks
Search Behavior | | voipme0 -
Why are Google ranking changes so drastic?
Hi SEOmoz community I'm sure this question has been asked numerous times before. At the same time there must be plenty of people out there wondering about the same thing: Why are Google ranking changes so drastic? It's like the diva of search engines. When checking the SEOmoz ranking reports, sometimes lots of keywords improve, the next week it's vice versa. Mind though that the ranking changes are not in proportion. While improving keywords climb up by approx. 1 - 10 positions, declining keywords always get a smack with a 15 - 25 position drop, even though these very same keywords are being targeted onsite through new content. It seems to make no difference after all 😉 Is it possible, that keyword fluctuations are stronger for younger sites? The site I am talking about is about a year old. Is it possible that more competitive keywords see more drastic fluctuations? Would be interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks!!
Search Behavior | | Hermski0 -
How do i know if my links are being classed as spammy?
I have recently notice that a lot of my domains are dropping positions where they have been in a solid position for nearly a year which was good 🙂
Search Behavior | | Dorzone
I am now wondering if google is dropping them due to spammy links but i don't have the first clue how i would find this out. Does anyone have a good way to figure this out or anything to help with this?0