Google’s Manual Action Penalties Doubled in 2016

Google’s Manual Action Penalties Doubled in 2016

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As part of that mission, they have an extensive set of tools to fight web-spam. Google released a report earlier this month detailing their web-spam-fighting efforts and manual action penalties taken in 2016. This is important to know even if you’re not a spammer. If Google thinks that some of your marketing tactics or your ad network are against their policies, you could find your website penalized.

Google’s 3 Core Methods of Fighting Against Spam

Google fights spam in its search results through three core methods:

Search algorithm […] Read more

Your Blog Comments Could Be Hurting You

Your Blog Comments Could Be Hurting You

Untrustworthy claims are a quick way to get kicked off of Google, but there are places where they can sneak in without your noticing. A picture of a fit person without a disclaimer can be construed as an untrustworthy claim, for instance. There is one place, however, where false claims can be made without notice.

We had a client with a weight-loss product come to us. A competitor had left a comment on their blog with specific claims about the product, praising it in glowing terms and detailing how much weight they lost. Then the competitor ratted them out to Google. […] Read more

How to Recover from a Thin Content Penalty

How to Recover from a Thin Content Penalty

There’s 12 different manual penalties that can be enforced on a site by Google and many of these are pretty straightforward. For instance, unnatural links coming from the site means a user needs to remove all those spammy links and request to be reconsidered by Google. However, the Thin Content penalty can be a bit confusing and there are a few steps that need to be addressed before the penalty can be removed by you or by the team of qualified experts experienced in removing SEO penalties. 

Thin content is defined as content with ‘little or no added value’. Now what does this […] Read more

What is Unnatural Links Manual Penalty by Google?

What is Unnatural Links Manual Penalty by Google?

One of the most common manual  SEO penalties by Google is for having “unnatural links to your site” or “unnatural links from your site”. This often happens when a site has been participating in poor linking building practices or receiving payment for links. Having one of these penalties enforced on a site can can cause some major headaches, fortunately, there’s some simple steps that can be done to get the site back on Google.

The first step is identifying what type of manual penalty the site has been hit with. By logging into the Search Console, find the appropriate site, […] Read more

Differences Between Manual and Algorithmic Google Penalties

Differences Between Manual and Algorithmic Google Penalties

Over the past few years there’s been nothing more terrifying to digital marketers than the dreaded Google penalty. Website owners have seen rankings jump and drop within the day as Google updates are announced, and unfortunately many sites were penalized for different reasons.

With there being different types of Google penalties out there it can be difficult determining which information is accurate. The first step to recovering from a penalty and getting back on Google includes understanding which penalty the site was hit with and how to overcome that setback. The following article will help users determine which penalty they […] Read more

Google’s Penguin 4.0 – How it will change SEO penalties

Google’s Penguin 4.0 – How it will change SEO penalties

At the end of September of this year (2016), Google released an update to their Penguin algorithm called Penguin 4.0. Google has released a number of different updates to its search algorithm over the last 14 years. Some have really impacted sites, and others not so much. Penguin was a major one that impacted a lot of marketers. When Penguin or Panda get updated, site owners go rushing to their SEO dashboards to check their new positions.

However, this Penguin update may prove to be a bit of a boon for marketers. First, Google says that this will be the final […] Read more

Can I Just Delete my Adwords Account?

Can I Just Delete my Adwords Account?

In a previous article titled “You and Google: Till Death do you Part”, I talked about how everything you do with a Google AdWords account is going to be tied to you, no matter what. A common question I get when talking to clients is why can’t I just delete the Adwords account and make a new one? It sounds very logical. Anything offending on the old account would be gone and you can get a fresh start with a new AdWords score.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Google infractions are much like getting points on your license from the […] Read more

Clearing Up AdWords Account Suspension vs. Suspended Website

Most people don’t know this, but there are two types of Google Adwords suspensions. One is a suspension of an AdWords account, and the other is a suspension of a website. They have important differences and you should be aware of them if you’re a Google AdWords user.

If you have a suspended website, this means that Google has found something it doesn’t like about it and has halted AdWords for that site. In certain cases, it may even de-list the website from their search results. However, the suspension doesn’t apply to the rest of the sites that are in an […] Read more

Adwords Account Suspended for Billing info?

Unverified Billing Suspensions are often Old Suspended AdWords Accounts

It may seem like a simple clerical error, but if Google can’t verify your billing info they’re not going to let you use their ad network. After all, they want to get paid too! Sometimes you’ll get this message for more complicated reasons.

 

If you received an adwords account suspension because of Google trying to verify your billing info it is for one of two reasons.

Old suspended accounts

The first reason is because you might have another account you have previously used and Google has been able to link your billing information […] Read more

Google Tightens Grip on Payday Loans – Bans from Adwords Ads

Sorry “predatory” lenders, Google just banned You

When you play in Google’s PPC pool, you have to abide by Google’s rules. Unfortunately for businesses, those rules can change at any time. Most of the time it’s easy for a business to adapt to the changes, but sometimes a change comes down that completely destroys a company’s PPC plan. One of these changes is getting your business added to AdWord’s list of prohibited businesses.

Goodbye, TitleMax?

Google has announced that they’re revoking AdWords access to certain types of lenders that they consider to be predatory. The new changes will take effect on July 13th of […] Read more