Website Penalty Indicator

Website Penalty Indicator Do you have a penalty? Enter Your Domain: Choose Your Database: Google.com Google.co.uk Google.ca Google.ru Google.de Google.fr Google.es Google.it Google.com.br Google.com.au Type In The Following Characters: Each year, Google changes its search algorithm around 500–600 times. While most of these changes are minor, Google occasionally rolls out a "major" algorithmic update (such as Google Panda and Google Penguin) that affects search results in significant ways. For search marketers, knowing the dates of these Google updates can help explain changes in rankings and organic website traffic and ultimately improve search engine optimization.

Disclaimer: This tool uses SEMrush organic traffic data, which should be taken only as an indication of actual organic traffic. Similarly, whilst the Google update overlay may indicate an algorithmic ‘penalty’, further verification may be required. Algorithm change details provided by Moz.

A History of Google Algorithm Updates

Featured Snipped De-duping – Late January 2020

Creating significant implications for rank tracking and organic CTR, Google stopped showing URLs in featured snippets from appearing as traditional organic results. Google considers a featured snipped to be a promoted organic result. Traditionally a website that received a featured snipped on a search term also appeared within the search results below, meaning they got double exposure. In an attempt to declutter the page and depower the lucky winner, the 1-10 result on the first page will be removed.

Featured snippets were first introduced in 2014 and are often called “position zero”.

CORE Update – January 2020

This update caused ranking fluctuations for a few days in mid-January. Health, Family & Community, and Beauty & Personal Care sites saw the most fluctuations. Core updates make very broad changes to the search algorithm, and anyone affected by one should consider how well their content matches up against the needs of your visitors. It is worth bearing in mind that sites affected by one core update are likely to be affected by subsequent updates.

BERT Update – October 2019

Allegedly one of the biggest changes to Google search in the past 5 years, the BERT update focused on better understanding search queries. Google’s official explanation was:

“These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries, as BERT is able to help Search better understand the nuance and context of words in Searches and better match those queries with helpful results.

Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

Broad Core Algorithm Update – September 2019

Broad updates don’t tend to target anything specific, instead, they improve the overall effectiveness of Google’s systems. This can lead to drops or gains in ranking and the main advice from Google is to focus on producing quality content. These updates won’t penalize any websites but they will reassess any new content featured in search results since the last update, and possibly rank quality content higher. Content improvements can aid recovery from any drop in ranking.

Core Update – June 2019

In a rare move, Google announced they would be releasing a new update prior to rolling it out. The update is thought to have affected low-quality news sites while boosting trusted aggregator sites. It may have also affected video carousels, with many YouTube channels seeing 25% increases in traffic.

Fred Update – March 2017

This was launched on March 8th 2017 and is one of the latest of Google’s major confirmed updates. It basically helps to ensure that Google’s webmaster guidelines are adhered to by targeting violations.

Possum Updates – September 2016

It was launched on September 1st 2016. It basically helped to ensure that locations given to the users were as accurate to the users’ current location as possible

Rank Brain Updates – October 2015

These updates were launched on October 26th 2015. It worked like a refresh to Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. It helped Google to understand user queries better.

Mobile Update – April 2015

This was launched on April 21st 2015. This update ensures that when users use the search engine on their mobile phones, mobile-friendly pages rank closer to the top. This is to ensure optimum usability and speed.

Pigeon Update – July 2014

Google’s Pigeon was released on 24th July 2014. This Google algorithm update, unlike its predecessors, was designed to give more accurate and relevant local search results. Google rewarded local businesses that had a strong organic presence with better visibility in traditional search results. Several updates on Pigeon have been made since 2014.

In many ways Pigeon can be described as not being punitive, rather, it serves a specific group of users best.

Other honorable Google algorithm updates include:

Hummingbird Update – August 2013

This was launched on August 22nd 2013. The name Hummingbird came from the speed and precision of the update. This new algorithm allows Google to better understand phrases, providing precise results to complex search queries. It expands brand content strategy so as to have more informational content on their site. In addition, it gives substitutions as a user enters the query. It also brings out results far more complex search queries. Google’s knowledge graph also appears more often than it did previously giving more direct answers in search results.

Hummingbird has improved how users are sent to a specific page and directed to the information they are seeking. Hummingbird has also promoted voice-powered searches, helping to create a smarter search engine that is able to better decipher user intent. Hummingbird update has been branded “the heart of Google’s search engine” as it can filter billions of pages to find the most relevant search results.

Penguin Update – April 2012

This was launched on April 24th 2012. This update specifically targeted link spam as well as manipulative link building practices. Matt Cutts, head of the Google web spam team officially announced the update via Twitter as the Penguin Algorithm Update. It was an extension to the Panda Update and was Google’s response to the increasing practice of black hat search engine optimization techniques which are used to gain higher search rankings in ways that violate search engine guidelines. A number of updates were made to the Penguin algorithm since its launch in 2012 including;

Google Penguin 1.1(March 26, 2012)

Google Penguin 1.2 (October 5, 2012)

Google Penguin 2.0 (May 22, 2013)

Google Penguin 2.1 (October 4, 2013)

Google Penguin3.0 (October 17, 2014)

Google Penguin 4.O (September 23, 2016)

With the last update, Penguin became a part of the core algorithm, meaning it evaluates websites and links in real-time.

Panda Update – February 2011

Panda was launched in February 24th 2011. It was aimed at dealing with quality and optimization issues that the search engine identified in a number of websites indexed at the time. It assigns a quality score to webpages which is then used as a ranking factor. The Panda Update is also known as the Farmer Update. When this update was implemented it had a huge impact on a broad range of companies that operated online. Panda was introduced to improve search quality by eliminating prevailing content farms as well as spam sites that were designed to take advantage of Google’s vulnerabilities.

Panda has great at cleaning up low-quality sites that occupy valuable SERP real estate. The update did not come without it share of problems, especially for companies with e-commerce initiatives. Sites both big and small started disappearing from their usual keyword ranks they had previously owned for years. Lots of companies were impacted negatively and were completely unable to recover traffic.

Numerous updates have been made to the Panda Update, with most of them focusing on eliminating obstructive spam sites. These Panda updates have focused on getting advertisers to achieve their maximum search potential.