This is a quick tip to help you monitor the health of your website on Google using email and RSS feeds.
You will automatically get to know whether your site has been penalized in rankings or completely banned in Google.
To clarify, ‘penalized’ means that the site exists in Google but ranks considerably lower while ‘ban’ refers to a situation where the site get removed from Google and doesn’t appear in search pages anymore.
Case A: Website is Removed from Google
The site: operator shows a list of pages from your website that exist in Google’s index. If that count is dropping, you may want to investigate.
http://www.dapper.net/transform.php?dappName=GoogleSiteSearch&transformer=RSS&extraArg_title=Pages&v_Query=abc.com
To automatically monitor the count of your pages inside Google’s index, subscribe to the following RSS feed - Just replace abc.com with your own URL.
Case B: Website Gets Penalized in Google
We can easily track penalties by setting up a custom report inside Google Analytics.
From Google Analytics, go to Traffic Sources -> Search Engines. Now click ‘google’ in the reports section on the right.
The next page will show traffic to your blog that originates just from Google. Rather than checking this report manually each day, we can setup an alert through Email -> Schedule -> Daily, sent each morning.
The PDF report includes a graph for previous days so you can quickly discover any change in traffic patterns.
What’s next: Once you figure out that the site has been banned or penalized in Google, it’s time to write a reconsideration request.
Related: Tracking Emails with Google Analytics
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/search/website-penalized-or-banned-in-google/3848/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Thanks. That’s what I wanted to know. ;)
Written by Vishal Gupta on 07.08.08
Also try this google.com/search?aq=f&hl=en&q=site%3Alabnol.org+***+-view
It is supposed to be those sorta ignored by google.
Written by Brajeshwar on 07.08.08
Amit,
Suppose a website homepage had a PR of 3 and some of the inner pages also had a PR of 2 and 3 and suddenly one day he finds that the homepage PR has fallen to 0 whereas his inner pages still retain that PR..Does it mean the website has been penalised?
Written by Tech Search Maniac on 07.08.08
My Blog was ‘banned’ atleast for 15 days, (I do not know reasons?) I did not recvd any Google search traffic, bt now it is about normal and my 75% Google search traffic is back? Google is the King who rules the Virtual World : )
Cheers : )
Written by Piyush Kumar on 07.08.08
yes very important information thnx Amit
Written by Amit on 07.08.08
Amit - Thanks for the Great Tip.
Written by Guneet on 07.08.08
These two steps you mentioned here actually does not exactly tell that your website is banned or penalized in Google. link: operator always changes and it’s not a sign of any kind of ban. Many new websites has link count always zero.
And there could be many reasons for traffic loss not just that you are banned or penalized.
Anyway thanks for the info.
Written by Sunil on 07.09.08
iwebtools has some useful tools as well.But this tip is helpful.
Written by AboutOnlineTips on 07.09.08
I have recently created a blog, but it is not appearing in google search even if i search for whole url
Written by Sakheer on 07.09.08
Amit,
Can you guide us new bloggers how to optimize / SEO Blogger Blogs for a good and longterm traffic, I would wait for your post on this issue, thanks in advance.
Pl remember to guide us as we are non techy and just freelance full time writer!
Written by Piyush Kumar on 07.09.08
Its a great way to track and anyalyze pages indexed in google.
Written by Sandip Chhettri on 07.09.08
Again, many thanks, useful if you want to compare similar web sites and blogs…
Written by pcsourcepoint on 07.15.08
Interesting post. I thought I was being penalised by Google (with one post) but after a few weeks everything got back to normal. I guess there is a complex interplay of factors and it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions.
Written by Tysen Woodlock on 07.20.08
Thanks, I needed to know that.
Written by Singapore Seminars on 07.24.08
Can anybody say does google panalize for duplicate content in the same site. For e.g the same content exists in a post as well as tag. but in both case URL will be different.
Written by Sandip on 07.25.08
Thanks for the info. This is a great way to keep track of many sites.
Written by Paul on 08.31.08