penalized?

[skypix]

how can you tell if youve been penalized?

Dan

[rama1]

You'll see your rating in Search Engine(s) is dropped significantly.

[HHI Golf Guy]

Because there are a wide range of penalties that a search engine may apply to a site it may take some digging around and testing to see if your site has been penalized. For example, Google bans sites, and there is evidence of -30 and -950 penalties (although I don't believe Google has ever confirmed those penalties).

Remember, not all penalties result in bans.

It can be a bit trickier to detect penalties in Yahho - especially becaus etheir SERP's have been so erratic for the past 8 months. One way to know if you have been penalized by Yahoo is to simply send them an email. In the past, they have been responsive to those types of inquiries. If they do acknowledge a penalty, pay very close attention to their response. They will give you a list of items that may have triggered the penalty.

Some people say that their response is generic, but in fact it does provide clues as to what the problem is.

But even correcting the problem does not ensure that Yahoo will reinstate the site. I have seen a few penalized domains come back in Yahoo, but I have seen even more sites never recover their rankings again.

If Yahoo or Google had previously indexed multiple pages on your web site, one way to check for a ban or severe penalty is to go to each SE and type:

site:www.mysite.com

If no pages show up for that command in Google (and they were previously in the Google index) then your site has been banned.

With the same test in Yahoo, if only your home page shows up you have most likely incurred a severe penalty. Again, you need to know if Yahoo had previously indexed more pages than just your home page.

However, this test does not always work in Yahoo. I had one of my own client sites that had only the index page showing up, yet they had #1 rankings for multiple competitive real estate phrases.

[RobM]

I think that explanation is just as good as any. Yahoo seems to be a little trickier to figure out as I have had some wierd things happen in yahoo and just the opposite in google...

[rationale]

One way to know is by logging into the Google Webmasters control panel...

You should be able to browse and see whether you have been penalized by Google or not...

[AustinReilly]

if you having trouble finding your site for keywords you used to rank for, you can copy a large peice of unique content from your site and yahoo the entire phrase. If yahoo still shows your site for those results then you know your not banned but maybe penalized.

[jvcus17]

well for me if you are penalized you have to explain that you are ignorant (even if it's not) however i suggest you to avoid it..you should better be responsible with it