How to tell if your website was hit by a Google penalty

All your so-called “successful” SEO cases are just situations where the client was either too lazy to audit their site or too naive and ended up hiring a “specialist” who temporarily boosted traffic… and that’s it.

If a site gets hit with a Google penalty, it’s usually easy to fix, the reason is often clear and specific.
But if there’s no visible penalty and the site still isn’t ranking, the solution is usually just going through a basic checklist (robots.txt, sitemap, etc).
Most of the time, it’s just basic stuff people overlook.
Hiring an SEO “expert” for this task isn't worth it.
SEO "guru" mostly rely on the fact that the client is too lazy or uninformed to check things themselves.
And when it comes to the real issue, no SEO guru is going to fix that.
Sometimes a site doesn’t rank because the stars didn’t align in Google’s AI brain.
There’s nothing you can do, except empty the client’s wallet.

Example:
I started a site back in November.
At first, 20 posts got indexed quickly, and then suddenly they disappeared from the index.
For 6 months, nothing else was indexed.
I stopped publishing because what's the point of putting effort into thoughtful content just to gift it to whoever copies it first?
Then, two months ago, Google brought the site back into the index along with a couple of my other sites.
But a month later deindexed them again.
Everything works according to Google's random whims.
I’m not going to keep writing content for a site that doesn’t get indexed.
I’ve already had that experience and spent a full year writing quality articles that never got indexed, but they did get indexed just fine when scraped and published on someone else’s site.
And no, there are no technical errors on my sites.
Some of them came back to life a year or two later without me doing anything at all.
Google simply removes and restores sites based on whatever mood it's in.
Some of those suddenly revived sites are now ranking quite well again without any improvements on my part.

No SEO “expert” can fix anything because there’s nothing to fix.
And no, I don’t need your advice.
The internet is full of SEO “specialists” crawling around like cockroaches, most of whom can only drain wallets while pretending they’re solving something.
I’ve adapted to Google’s mood swings.
I run several dozen small sites.
Some lose traffic for no reason, others recover on their own.
Google doesn’t want me to earn too much from blogging?
Fine, I’ll earn a little from a lot of blogs.

 

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i can help with this domain infoquis.com
Remarkable Age & Clean History: Established in 1998, with a verified clean and spam-free history (Wayback Machine records available).
Strong SEO Potential: Features an Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) of 26, backed by 116 quality backlinks from 66 unique linking websites, with an impressive 79% dofollow rate (73% of linking websites). This robust profile ensures a powerful head start for your SEO efforts.

 

The reason for a “clear and specific” drop in traffic usually only applies to manual penalties - in such cases, Google clearly states the issue in the Manual Actions section of GSC. With algorithmic penalties, unfortunately, things aren’t nearly as transparent or easy to pinpoint.

And no - this isn’t some kind of lottery on Google’s side, even if it might seem that way to you. There are very real reasons behind traffic drops, tied to concrete issues on the website.

I do understand your position - you've lost a significant amount of organic traffic across several of your sites because of this. But when you say things like "Sometimes a site doesn’t rank because the stars didn’t align in Google’s AI brain," it simply shows a lack of understanding of how SEO actually works. Pages - and even entire domains - can be deindexed for very specific reasons. The same goes for crawling issues. - There’s always a cause.

It’s never the case that “everything’s perfect” - the site, the content, the links - and traffic suddenly drops by half. That’s not how this works.

Yes, SEO - and especially Google’s indexing and ranking algorithms - have changed a lot over the past couple of years. So it’s not surprising that you’re confused and emotional about it.

I genuinely wish you fewer penalties and more peace of mind.

 

Read my previous comment again and try to find someone more naïve to sell your 'services' to...
What kind of penalty did I supposedly have on several sites that completely killed all my traffic, and then a year later, the traffic came back... even though I didn’t fix anything at all.
By the way, all the recovered sites have been working just fine...

 

Would you mind sharing your website URL? I'd like to take a quick look. If you're still trying to recover your rankings and want to get your site back to where it was, I may be able to provide some helpful insights.

 

They have already contacted an SEO agency, now you are asking them to hire you and wait another 6 months?
And your services should be paid in any case and now, and not in 6 months?
March 2024 - Google rolled out its Core Update - this is the reason.
No way to fix it until Google itself stops filtering the site.
A few of my sites lost traffic on the same month, 1 March 2024, and then another drop on 15 March 2024.

 

Well then, keep paying.
You're smart, right?
You think I'm just mad at Google and SEO specialists because I lost traffic.
Some of the traffic has already returned, and I've changed my strategy.
I knew from the start that if traffic suddenly starts to grow, it's only because Google missed something and will remove it soon.
So I'm fine.
But you keep paying, if you don't want to listen to advice...pay and wait six months.
In six months, either the "specialists" will disappear, or Google will remove the filters from your site, and no, it won’t be thanks to the “specialists” - just because the stars happened to align.

 

You’re once again trying to present your personal experience as objective truth. It’s not.

But I don’t see the point in trying to convince you. It’s pretty clear you don’t fully understand what you’re talking about.

If you don’t need help with your websites and have accepted your situation - why not just move on? Let things stay as they are. Why post nonsense that has little to do with how things actually work?

 

Looks like you're one of those for whom one lesson isn't enough...
Fine, pay again, hopefully the 2nd lesson will do the trick.

 

After going through the entire thread, it seems like members such as @MGwebmaster and myself are being perceived as just trying to sell services — especially when it comes to Google penalty recovery and other SEO-related solutions, which some now consider ineffective or outdated. At this point, it appears that expert opinion from @mayazir is the one being trusted the most in this discussion.

 

You can keep having fun, but I’m right.
By the way, I messed up a couple of times and posted comments to the wrong person, which, of course, doesn’t make my comments any less correct.

 

>"I messed up a couple of times..."
- It was a lot more than just a couple. You've clearly lost track - both of who you're talking to and what you're even saying.
Maybe it's time to stop posting this here and quit stirring up hostility. Otherwise, this forum will end up looking like a junkyard for people who aren't exactly known for their brilliance.

 

The fact that I replied to the wrong person doesn’t mean my comments were incorrect.
The first commenter said they had contacted an SEO agency, and it didn’t help - that’s exactly my point.
There’s no need to tell stories about how SEO "specialists" make sites "take off" because that’s simply not true.
If Google decides not to give your site traffic, then there won’t be any, and no indexing either.
Google can just deindex a site for no reason.
And if the site is functioning, then the traffic is still controlled by Google.
You won’t be able to go beyond the limit Google has set.
I’m not stirring up hostility, I commented to help save time and money for the first commenter and for anyone planning to improve their deindexed sites or small blogs.
And I don't like "specialists" who promise miracles in six months, take money upfront, and then either disappear or just shrug in regret when nothing works.

 

This is Helpful, especially the part about checking branded vs. non-branded traffic. i've seen that pattern after updates, and it's a clear sign it's not a manual penalty. also agree that many "penalties" are really just ranking reshuffles. thanks for laying it out so clearly! bookmarking this for future audits.

 

This isn't meant to determine a manual penalty. The fact that a site has a manual penalty is much easier and more reliably checked by simply looking at the Manual Actions section in Google Search Console. That alone will settle the question.

A drop in branded traffic points to more complex cases involving algorithmic filters. If your traffic declined due to changes in Google's algorithms or increased competition in your niche, branded traffic usually remains unaffected. But if the issue is a penalty that impacts the entire website, branded traffic may also show a decline - although this doesn’t always happen in a perfectly linear way.

 

Good Guide. Thanks for sharing