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Why aren't penalized sites notified in Webmaster Tools?

 
 

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Abstract Abstract

Question: “Why aren't penalized sites notified through the Webmaster Tools?”

Answer: For many penalties, such as hidden text, webmasters are notified via the Webmaster Tools Console. Google does not want to clue in black-hats and spammers though, so some penalties will not get notifications.
0:00
We got a question from JP in Los Angeles. JP asks: “When a site is penalized by Google, why isn't a message sent to the owner via Google Webmaster Tools telling them how and why it was penalized? Currently, site owners are left grasping in the dark trying to figure out what they did to cause a penalty.”

0:19
Well the fact is we do. We don't do it for all penalties because there are some bad guys, some spammers and black-hats, who you don't want to clue in. But for things like hidden text, if we think your site is hacked or even vulnerable to hacking. We've even talked about sending messages to people who we think have old Google Analytics packages.

0:39
So, but we do send a large number of people warnings about their site to sort of say “Hey, heads up, we've had to penalize your site because of hidden text or for other reasons”. We don't do it for every single site and we don't do it for every single penalty because there are people who try to see how far they can get away with and then as soon as they've been caught and the know that they've been caught, they'll start again on another site.

1:01
So we'll keep trying to find out ways to let the good guys know that they have issues without cluing-in or alerting the bad guys but we'll probably never be able to tell every single person that they've been penalized. We'll keep trying to do a good job though.