Google’s Debated Penalties & Filters Roundup

Feb 6, 2007 at 10:10am ET by Barry Schwartz

Over the years, there have been dozens if not hundreds, of theories on possible Google penalties and filters being used in the Google ranking algorithms. Joe Whyte provides an excellent roundup of many of those filters and penalties that the search forums have debated over the years. I am not getting into the debate on if these filters or penalties exist and I won’t say if his “workarounds” work. Here is a listing of the what he comes up with:

Google Sandbox
Google -30
Google Bombing
Google Bowling
Google Duplicate Content Filter
Google Supplemental Results
Google Domain name Age Filter
Google’s Omitted Results Filter
Google’s Trust Rank Filter
links.htm page filter
Reciprocal Link Filter
Link Farming Filter
CO-citation Linking Filter
To many links at once Filter
To many Pages at once filter
Broken Link Filter
Page Load Time Filter
Over Optimization Filter
Keyword Stuffing Filter
Meta Tag Stuffing Filter
Automated Google Query Filter
IP Class Filter
Google Toolbar Filter
Click through Filter in serps
Traffic Filter

Some filters off the top of my head that he may have missed include:

Google’s Two Word Keyword Filter? (details)
Country Specific Filters & Weights (story)
The Network Filter (story)
The Hyphen Filter (story)

Oh, and let’s not forget the Name That Filter Game from a year and a half ago.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

See more articles by Barry Schwartz >

Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:

See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Google: SEO, SEO: Duplicate Content, SEO: Spamming sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!

FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!