How to check if a website is penalized ?

I am SEOing now a old website that used to rank very good one year ago .
Now is on positions 40+ .
Even searching for full title it appears on 4th page .

How do you guys check if a website is penalized ?

Thanks

 

I'v often wondered how to check if a site is being penalized or not, anybody know? Email google perhaps?

 

If i am correct you can try

site:yourdomainname.com

in google and if it does not return any indexed pages then your site is banned.

but this is only true if you earlier had any indexed pages.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath, I've asked before and they state that they cannot manually review sites other then for site-reinclusions.

 

Also you can send a mail (through their web interface) and they should reply as,

Please be assured that your site is not currently banned or penalized by Google.

 

Thanks for reply but I don't agree with you .

Try site:www.seoinc.com they are indexed but penalized , they were #1 one year ago on google for seo and now #10000000000 .

If searching for all their title they are #45+ same as website I am checking right now .

Sorry I can't give url have to ask before owner before .

Thanks .

 

I emailed Google about if my site was penalized and I received a reply back within a few days.

 

Thanks I will try this but this website has some external links and I want to check them all for bad neighborhoods .