After the recent Panda update, many websites saw a precipitous drop in their traffic. Google keeps coming with new penalties and filters. The principle behind Google’s action is that the users of search engine should be able to find information they are looking for in shortest possible time. This also means that the results that Google serves should be high in quality. Various penalties and filters are to keep quality in check and remove those websites that are taking advantage of various bad practices to come at the top of the search results.

But sometimes even the innocent webmasters fall prey to Google wrath. In this article we discuss how to decide if you are facing Google penalty and what to do about it.

Penalty or Filter –
First try to understand how penalties are different from filters. Filters are those cases where rankings drop while penalties are those cases where site is completely wiped out from Google. Filtering is similar to penalty but not a complete wipe out. Remember filters are more common and penalties are rare. As an example consider keyword stuffing. If you overdo it, you are more likely to face a filter than a penalty. The effect of filters is reversible. Once you remove the pages that are activating filters, your rankings should be back to normal. Penalties are not so easy to handle. You would have to file for a reinclusion request for your website to reappear on Google.

False impression of penalty –
Many people feel that their sites are penalized. But they are not ranking since they are in a competitive market. And their site is not as strong as that of the competition. Sometimes the ranking start dropping. This again may be due to competitor being aggressive in link building. If they are doing better than you, you will lose rank and traffic. This has nothing to do with Google penalty.