Google Penalty for One Blog Post? - It Can Happen!
I think I was hit by a Google penalty. I didn't receive any notification on my Search console, though. But suddenly I wasn't ranking well for my most popular post. Since that post brings most of my traffic, my daily traffic suddenly dropped from around 200 to around 60.
The day my traffic dropped was when I publish a post Google may not have liked. At least I couldn't figure out any other reason why the traffic dropped then.
The post may not have been so great, maybe I used the keyword phrase too much and there were too many similarities to posts I had already published before.
Whatever it was, that post didn't please Google, so I suppose Google punished me for one blog post. This proves just one blog post can get you in trouble!
Since that blog post seemed to only bring trouble to me, I removed the whole post. I wonder if it's a coincidence that after removing the post, another post I had published after the problematic post had ranked on first page, position 1 on Google. And Google hadn't ranked it before now, even though all other search results for that keyword were crappy and low quality.
So, be careful with ALL content you publish on your site; even one blog post can get you in trouble if you don't please Google.
Have you experienced anything like this? Have you been hit by Google penalty? How did you figure out you might be punished, and how did you recover? Please share your experience in the comments!
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Another possibility is that it wasn't punishment. Perhaps someone else wrote a really great blog post on the topic of yours.
Just reflecting.
Yes, but it's weird that my traffic dropped suddenly, and only Google traffic. Usually, when you see a sudden drop in Google traffic, it's a Google penalty. If someone else had just published a great blog post, the traffic would drop more slowly.
I'm sorry to hear that. According to Google :
the algorithmic filtering, on the other hand, is a fully automated part of Google’s ranking algorithm. Google’s set of software and algorithms can detect a certain number of manipulations, or what they consider to be manipulations, on any part of a website and “filter” this site accordingly. You don’t receive any messages or alerts if your site loses positions as a result of algorithmic filtering.
Yes, Google doesn't inform you if the punishment is based on algorithm and not a manual warning. They would inform you about a manual warning on Search console, but I didn't have any warnings there.
I had to figure out myself why they punished me, and my only clue was the one blog post, because the traffic suddenly dropped after I published it. I hope my traffic will recover soon.
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I have always thought Google had too much power, it is supposed to be a search engine, but it acts like an Almighty God. It is going to tell you what people like to read or want to read, so in the end all I can say is watch those keywords. That is something you already know now, good luck in the future.
Thank you! I agree, Google has too much power. It is like a God of the internet world, indeed.
Remember that the bigger something is, the harder it falls!