While part I of this series dealt with the different types of penalties, now I want to introduce some tests to show whether a Google-penalty was issued and if this is the case, which one you are stuck with. I will leave out the PageRank depreciation – for one it has no bearing on the ranking at this time, for another there are no thoughts or tests necessary to detect the problem. In contrast to part I of the series, I now list the tests sequentially from worst to least penalty. This way one can use a process of elimination to follow the trail of their Google penalty.

Recognize delisting
The first test is a simple site-query: “site:domain.tld”. If the domain is not indexed anymore, meaning Google cannot find any pages for the domain, it does not necessarily mean a delisting. Especially with newer domains it is customary that Google needs some time to permanently add the domain to its index. It is also possible that if the content is online on different domains, Google simply decided on the “wrong” domain – it should also be examined if other domains are live and then a standard domain should be defined immediately. If none of the above situations are the case, meaning the site is linked often enough but the domain is still not in the index anymore, it is time to get rid of all spam and file a reinclusion-request through the Google-webmaster-tools.

Recognize site-depreciations
As a second test to diagnose why a site has been depreciated we use a search for the domain- or site-name, respectively. Usually this should lead to the domain being first in the results, recently also including site-links. If this is not the case then it is time to furrow your brow and get to work trying to figure out what went wrong, seeing that you most likely received a Google-penalty. Another way to guard against a mistake in this test is to search for keyword combinations that are so unique and non-contested that your site “should” rank first for them. You can be pretty sure of a Google-penalty if your site is being listed on page 30, 60 or the last page of results, usually from rank 950 on.

Recognize keyword-depreciations
It is rather complex to diagnose keyword based penalties and filters. This is thanks to Everflux, the continuous updating of Google's findings, the inclusion of sources such as Google-news and YouTube as well as the different stock of stored data in Google's data-centers. I think that, similar to the page-wide depreciation, it makes sense to use (hopefully existent!) keyword-monitoring to detect if several keywords have suffered noticeable rank-depreciations “over night”. In this context it should be noticeable if there is a depreciation of 30 or 60 positions or even a ranking at the end of the results. From time to time some mention the possibility to use accents on keywords to get around the filter that was laid onto the results retroactively. This turns “kredit” into “krèdit“. Another suggestion which leads in a similar direction is to take the “top queries” (dashboard → domain → statistics) from the Google-webmaster-tools and compare them to the Real ones. You have something to pursue if the Google-tool places the result at position 3 but the “real” Google search places the keyword at position 950.

What happens if none of the above tests yielded a result? Well this either means you have found a new Google-penalty (rather improbable) or that your sites position-fluctuations are within normal boundaries. In this case look for factors such as a new assessment of backlinks or an adjustment within the internal link-structure.
In the third part of this series I will talk about ways to escape a Google-penalty, prospects of finding them early and other pieces of advice.

Series: Google penalties – part I | Google penalties – part II | Google penalties – part III