Google: Penalties

Link free or die

Why are we so afraid of links? Columnist Julie Joyce goes through several of our biggest fears and discusses how healthy they really...

Julie Joyce | Feb 28, 2017 at 11:03 am ET

After rare Google confirmation of on-site penalty, Natural News is back in Google’s index

HealthNews.com confirms being reincluded in the Google index after being deindexed last week. ...

Barry Schwartz | Feb 28, 2017 at 9:01 am ET

Natural News was not banned from Google over fake news

A Google webmaster violation is the reason this web site was penalized by Google, not because the site is...

Barry Schwartz | Feb 23, 2017 at 3:25 pm ET

Google confirms rolling out the mobile intrusive interstitials penalty yesterday

Google said the mobile intrusive interstitial penalty went live yesterday, but webmasters have not claimed any issues...

Barry Schwartz | Jan 11, 2017 at 8:40 am ET

Google studying ways to deal with offensive search suggestions & results

Facing criticism over "fake news," inappropriate search suggestions and more, the search company is looking for long-term and comprehensive...

Danny Sullivan | Dec 16, 2016 at 8:54 pm ET

Google reviews schema guidelines to prohibit vulgar or profane language

Make sure your reviews don't contain profane or vulgar language. If they do, Google can remove your review rich...

Barry Schwartz | Dec 16, 2016 at 9:37 am ET

How to avoid an outbound link penalty from Google

We've all heard of unnatural link penalties from having a spammy backlink profile, but columnist Tony Edward notes that your site's outbound...

Tony Edward | Nov 11, 2016 at 12:10 pm ET

Google Safe Browsing “Repeat Offenders” will get a 30-day time-out

Do you continue to violate Google's safe browsing policies? Well, Google is about to get stricter on...

Barry Schwartz | Nov 8, 2016 at 6:04 pm ET

Google labels your links, such as ‘footer’ or Penguin-impacted

Google's manual action team has access to look at a page's link labels and may use that to dig deeper into the site's...

Barry Schwartz | Oct 10, 2016 at 2:23 pm ET

Google says Penguin recoveries have started to roll out now

Have you been waiting two or more years to recover from your Penguin penalty? Google said the recoveries are starting...

Barry Schwartz | Sep 28, 2016 at 8:31 pm ET

Google Penguin doesn’t penalize for bad links – or does it?

You technically no longer need to use the disavow file to help fix your Google Penguin issues - here is...

Barry Schwartz | Sep 28, 2016 at 12:33 pm ET

Google updates Penguin, says it now runs in real time within the core search algorithm

The latest announced release, Penguin 4.0, will also be the last, given its new real-time...

Barry Schwartz | Sep 23, 2016 at 8:00 am ET

Google reminds webmasters that widget links are against their webmaster guidelines

Don't be surprised if a new wave of unnatural link penalties are sent out via the Google Search Console for widget...

Barry Schwartz | Sep 8, 2016 at 8:37 am ET

Google warns it will crack down on “intrusive interstitials” in January

Google will reinforce its emphasis on the mobile search experience with a new penalty affecting "intrusive interstitials" on mobile web...

Barry Schwartz | Aug 23, 2016 at 12:00 pm ET

Key takeaways from the Google AMA: RankBrain, Panda, Penguin, bots & more

From Panda to Penguin, authorship to HTTPS, search console and mobile index, here are my key points from the SMX Advanced talk with...

Barry Schwartz | Jun 23, 2016 at 9:31 am ET

Updated: Google penalizes mobile sites using sneaky redirects

Google takes action on mobile sites that trick users into being redirected to an unwanted website from the mobile search results page. This...

Barry Schwartz | May 4, 2016 at 4:56 pm ET

Google drops product rich snippets from airline pricing websites

Google confirmed they removed the ability for some airline sites, such as Trip Advisor and Expedia, to show product rich snippets in the search...

Barry Schwartz | May 4, 2016 at 8:56 am ET

Google sent 4 million messages about search spam last year, saw 33% increase in clean-up requests

It is now even more important to verify your website in the Google Search Console, as you can see in Google's latest webspam...

Barry Schwartz | May 2, 2016 at 2:57 pm ET

Google’s manual action penalty this weekend was over free product reviews

The mass Google manual actions for outbound links was related to the warning Google gave a few weeks ago around bloggers giving links in...

Barry Schwartz | Apr 12, 2016 at 9:10 am ET

Google penalizes sites for unnatural outbound linking

Check your Google Search Console message center. Google sent out outbound link penalties over the...

Barry Schwartz | Apr 11, 2016 at 9:11 am ET