Why aren’t penalized sites notified in Webmaster Tools?

11 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

1. Rahulixigo  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   Most of the time google never send any warning. Even Matt already accepted in video.

   

2. todnyc  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   If you don’t have the time to check your keywords with “live” searches in Google every day, then you can certainly EXPECT to decline in the rankings; the competition is extreme, and literally on a global scale. You should also be increasing the number of links to your site by contacting webmasters of similar sites to help promote yours.

   

3. todnyc  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   And also, those sites may have just gotten more links recently!

   

4. todnyc  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   The reason for that would be that a number of sites have been making homepages or internal pages that have been better optimized for Google’s index. The same way that you had climbed as high as YOU did, surpassing perhaps 1000’s of others, is what the ones who have now surpassed YOU have done–only better. Take a look at the meta-data and the page design of the ones who are ahead of you, compare it with your own, and then go about making changes! I myself manage 3 sites & make changes regularly.

   

5. manfmnantucket  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   agreed- if goog traffic suddenly halts one must decide: invest in finding out how goog changed, or spend to correct for a penalty? With no alert, how do you spend?

   For small/livelihood sites, this is a do-or-die choice, thus Goog’s lack of transparency biases it against smaller sites.

   In a competitive search ecosystem, the $ impact of one engine’s penalty would be survivable - but goog’s monopoly raises issues analagous Net Neutrality for ISPs.

   Should search ops be regulated?

   

6. mattsoreco  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   Sorry Matt, you don’t. It happened to me without a warning. My site’s is as far from black hat as possible.

   

7. chordtune  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   I’d like to believe this but in my personal experience this is just not true :-(. I am not a black hat bad guy but my rankings dropped for unknown reason(s) for several weeks then returned.

   I had no feedback from Google at all. None. This despite multiple appeals from me - I don’t want a recurrence of a penalty.

   Google should act more responsibly and could so easily do so.

   Grahame

   

8. manfmnantucket  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   okay I really dont understand the rationale here? if I dont’ get notified but think I do have a penalty, does that mean I’m considered a ‘bad guy’?

   I did get warnings that someone had injected bad script into some pages a year ago, that was a great heads-up, I was able to find/delete the SQL injection.
   If that’s what it is THIS time I’d love to know which pages! It’s been 3 months now waah.

   

9. nyfalcon1  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

   Ty Matt

   I got a message yesterday and someone hacked into my site and placed some bad urls and keywords. Without this message I would have had no idea why my site was taken out of the search results.

   

10. aguf2001  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

    it´s looks like JP from Los Angeles is one of the bad gays… he didn´t get the warning. lol

    

11. okiedokies  |  May 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm #

    hawaiian shirts