How to identify Google Penalties

5 sources and a process to help identify a penalty which reduces yours organic search traffic

Given the importance of organic search to many businesses, keeping on top of the latest ranking factors for SEO and, in particular, the changes to Google's ranking algorithms and webspam penalties, is a major concern for most businesses and a full-time job for many today.

If it's not your full-time job, discovering about a penalty will be a nasty shock and the names of the different webspam penalties can be confusing.  To help keep marketers up-to-date with the changes that matter, we regularly update our 7 Steps guides summarising the latest changes and in this post we recommend 5 sources and a process shown in an infographic.

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5 sources to find out about the latest Google updates

You can also glean a lot about the latest algorithm changes you may be subject to from specialist communities for SEOs. I talked to Dave Chaffey about what he recommended - these are the ones he recommended to check out if you’re worried you have been affected by a recent penalty or new webspam filter.

• 1. Google Webmaster Central Blog. Of course, this has to be top of the list. Major announcements and clarifications are released here. For example, when the Panda update struck in 2011 Google issued this guidance on building high quality sites - it’s still relevant today plus they have their regularly updated 'Webmaster content quality guidelines' - a must read for marketers too.
• 2. Moz Google Algorithm Change History. This is good for a single view of the big picture going back through time.
• 3. SEO Round Table Google updates category - this is personally collated by SEO veteran Barry Schwartz “Rusty Brick”. This is one of Dave's personal favourites since it covers smaller changes, gives a round-up of views and is a personal review.
• 4. Webmaster World Google SEO news and discussion - best for SEOs sharing experiences on the new changes - for well over 10 years this has been one of the best sources for detailed discussions of both major and minor updates where forum members share the pain of what they’re experiencing.
• 5. Publishers dedicated to SEO. Finally, you have the sites focused on SEO including Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and Moz  they’re good for major updates following up with analysis of what Google is saying on and off record, but typically they won’t have such immediate coverage of smaller updates.

A process for troubleshooting penalties

Promodo's Troubleshooting Google Penalties infographic gives a simple introduction with a practical process chart to take you through the steps of how to 'get your organic traffic back' and the associated tools to help along the way. It's a little dated now, but the main factors of the Penguin and Panda updates it describes still apply.