Types of Google SEO Penalties

If you have received a manual action penalty in Google Search Console, you need to “Submit a reconsideration request” to get it revoked.

There are many Google SEO penalties that webmasters can receive in 2024.

In our guide to Google penalties, we will provide information on how to recover from an SEO penalty.

What is a Google penalty?

A Google penalty is a punitive action by Google against websites that violate its Webmaster Guidelines.

Such penalties can result from algorithm updates or manual reviews, leading to a website’s decreased visibility in search results.

These penalties aim to lower the rankings of low-quality sites that employ deceptive or manipulative tactics to improve their search engine rankings.

To recover, site owners must rectify the violations and submit a reconsideration request to Google.

If you have received a Google penalty the webmaster has likely used black-hat SEO practices that violate spam guidelines.

How does Google detect SEO penalties?

Google detects policy-violating content and behaviours by human review or through automated systems.

Violating Google guidelines can result in a manual action Google SEO penalty that can affect all pages ranking in the search engines.

Websites that violate Google policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.

Google penalties are classified into two: algorithmic and manual penalties.

How many different penalties does Google have?

There are over 20 different types of Google SEO penalties in 2024. Here are some of the most recognised Google penalties:

• Thin Content With Little or No Added Value
• Unnatural Links to Your Site
• Cloaking and/or Sneaky Redirects
• Sneaky Mobile Redirects
• Cloaked Images
• AMP Content Mismatch
• Hidden Text and/or Keyword Stuffing
• Pure Spam
• Spammy Freehost
• Overoptimization of anchor text
• Structured Data Issue
• Unnatural Links From Your Site
• User-Generated Spam
• Discover Policy Violation: Adult-Themed Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Dangerous Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Harassing Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Hateful Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Manipulated Media
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Medical Content
• Discover Policy Violation: Misleading Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Sexually Explicit Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Terrorist Content
• News Policy Violation: Transparency
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Violence and Gore Content
• News and Discover Policy Violation: Vulgar Language and Profanity
• Site reputation abuse

There are more algorithm penalties which cause sitewide ranking decreases like Panda and Penguin updates.

Thin Content With Little or No Added Value

The “Thin Content With Little or No Added Value” Google SEO penalty targets websites that offer minimal, low-quality, or shallow pages that provide no real value to users.

This includes automatically generated content, pages with little to no original content, duplicate, or copied content.

Such content fails to meet user needs for information or assistance, leading to a negative impact on a website’s search rankings.

Addressing this penalty involves enriching site content with meaningful, original, and valuable information followed by submitting a reconsideration request to Google.

The “Thin Content With Little or No Added Value” Google SEO penalty affects all pages and sees reduced display features, lower ranking or even removal from Google Search results.

The messaging on Google Search Console says: “This site appears to contain a significant percentage of low-quality or shallow pages that do not provide users with much added value (such as thin affiliate pages, cookie-cutter sites, doorway pages, automatically generated content or copied content).”

How To Recover

To recover from the Thin Content With Little or No Added Value Google penalty, enhance your website’s content to provide substantial, relevant information that meets users’ needs and complies with Google’s quality guidelines.

After improving your content’s depth and value, submit a reconsideration request through Google Search Console, detailing the improvements made.

For more detailed steps, consider reviewing Google’s guidelines on content quality.

Unnatural Links to Your Site

Unnatural links are links artificially created to manipulate a website’s ranking in search engines.

Unnatural links violate Google’s guidelines and a website can be penalized for them.

They weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page.

Check out our in-depth guide on Google unnatural links penalty.

How To Recover

To recover from the Unnatural Links to Your Site Google penalty, start by identifying and removing or disavowing any backlinks that appear manipulative or untrustworthy.

After cleaning up your link profile, submit a reconsideration request through Google Search Console, detailing the actions taken to rectify the issue.

Unnatural Links From Your Site

The “Unnatural Links From Your Site” SEO penalty is where Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links on your website.

Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate ranking in Google search results is a violation of Google’s spam policies.

Here is a video explaining the “Unnatural Links From Your Site” manual action penalty.

How to Recover

Here are the steps to recovering from the Unnatural Links From Your Site manual action SEO penalty:

1. Review and understandGoogle link spam policy
2. Identify any links on your website that violate Google link spam policy
3. Remove the backlinks linking out to spammy websites
4. If showing examples of bad sites, then change the hyperlink tag torel=”nofollow”
5. Request review in google search console
6. Provide examples that show you improved the website and stopped spammy outbound links
7. Wait after you’ve submitted a reconsideration request and if the issue is removed, Google will revoke the manual action notice

It can take weeks for the Google spam team to respond to manual action penalties, so be patient.

Site reputation abuse

The “site reputation abuse” Google SEO penalty is when Google has detected that a portion of the site is violating its spam policy on site reputation abuse.

This is a direct attack to prevent Parasite SEO strategies.

Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site’s ranking signals.

Such third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of a host site’s main purpose or produced without close oversight or involvement of the host site, and provide little to no value to users.

When webmasters are looking to accept any content as guest posting for a fee many search engine optimisation specialists manipulate this with low-quality thin pages on high DR sites.

How To Recover

To address the Site Reputation Abuse Google penalty, it’s essential to thoroughly audit your site for any content or practices that might harm your site’s reputation or mislead users.

Implementing significant improvements to ensure transparency and reliability in your content can help restore trust.

Following these changes, submit a detailed reconsideration request via Google Search Console, outlining the measures taken to enhance your site’s integrity.

Cloaking and/or Sneaky Redirects

The Cloaking and Sneaky Redirects Google penalty targets deceptive practices where the content presented to search engine crawlers is different from that shown to users, or users are redirected to a different page than Google indexed.

This breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines aims to manipulate search rankings by misleading both the search engine and the user, often to serve spammy or irrelevant content.

Addressing such violations is crucial for maintaining the integrity and trustworthiness of a website in the eyes of both Google and its visitors.

How To Recover

To recover from a Cloaking and/or Sneaky Redirects Google penalty, it’s crucial to first identify and remove any content or redirects on your site that differ between users and search engines.

Ensure that all users, regardless of device, are presented with the same content that search engines index. After making these corrections, submit your site for a reconsideration request through Google Search Console, clearly documenting the changes made.

This process demonstrates your commitment to adhering to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can help restore your site’s standing in search results.

Sneaky Mobile Redirects

The Sneaky Mobile Redirects Google penalty addresses the deceptive practice of redirecting mobile users to different content or websites than what is presented to desktop users or search engines.

This undermines user experience and trust by delivering content that users did not expect or intend to visit, often for spammy or malicious purposes.

How To Recover

To resolve a Sneaky Mobile Redirects Google penalty, begin by ensuring your website provides a consistent experience across all devices, without any unwarranted redirects for mobile users.

This involves auditing your site’s mobile version for any redirects that differ from the desktop experience and removing them.

After addressing these issues, submit a reconsideration request via Google Search Console, detailing the corrective measures taken to align with Google’s guidelines.

This step is crucial in demonstrating your commitment to providing a transparent and uniform user experience.

Cloaked Images

The Cloaked Images Google penalty targets deceptive practices where images shown to search engine crawlers differ from those presented to users, violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

This can involve serving one image to a search engine for indexing while showing a different image to users, often for manipulative or misleading purposes.

How To Recover

To recover from the Cloaked Images Google penalty, ensure that all images on your site are consistent for both users and search engine crawlers.

This requires removing any scripts or techniques that show different images to crawlers than to users.

After making these corrections, submit a detailed reconsideration request through Google Search Console, explaining the changes made to comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

AMP Content Mismatch

The AMP Content Mismatch Google penalty is issued when the content on an AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) version of a webpage significantly differs from its non-AMP counterpart.

This discrepancy can lead to a poor user experience, as visitors may not find the information they expected based on the search results.

How To Recover

To resolve the AMP Content Mismatch Google penalty, ensure your AMP pages mirror the content of their non-AMP counterparts as closely as possible.

This includes text, images, and other media, ensuring users have a consistent experience across both versions of your site.

After aligning your AMP and non-AMP content, submit a reconsideration request through Google Search Console, detailing the steps taken to rectify the content discrepancies.

Hidden Text and/or Keyword Stuffing

The Hidden Text and/or Keyword Stuffing Google penalty targets tactics that involve concealing text on web pages or overloading content with irrelevant keywords to manipulate search rankings.

This includes using text the same colour as the background or unnaturally repeating keywords, which degrades the user experience and the integrity of search results.

How To Recover

To escape the Hidden Text and/or Keyword Stuffing Google penalty, you must revise your web content to eliminate any hidden text and ensure that keyword usage is both relevant and naturally integrated within the content.

Following these adjustments, submit a reconsideration request via Google Search Console, clearly detailing the corrective measures undertaken to align with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Pure Spam

The Pure Spam Google penalty is applied to websites engaging in aggressive spam techniques, such as using scraped content, cloaking, and other manipulative practices that violate Google’s guidelines.

This penalty reflects Google’s commitment to ensuring high-quality, relevant search results by penalising sites that attempt to deceive search algorithms and degrade user experience.

How To Recover

To recover from the Pure Spam Google penalty, thoroughly overhaul your website to remove any spammy practices, including scraped content, cloaking, and any other tactics that manipulate search rankings.

After making substantial improvements to ensure compliance with Google’s guidelines, submit a detailed reconsideration request through Google Search Console, explaining the steps taken to clean up your site and enhance the quality of your content.

Spammy Freehost

The Spammy Freehost Google penalty targets websites hosted on free hosting services that are predominantly used for spammy practices.

This penalty is part of Google’s efforts to maintain the quality of its search results by discouraging the use of free hosts to create low-quality, spam-filled sites.

How To Recover

To navigate away from the Spammy Freehost Google penalty, consider migrating your website to a more reputable hosting service known for maintaining high-quality standards and stringent policies against spam.

After the transition, ensure that your website’s content and practices adhere strictly to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Following these steps, submit a reconsideration request through Google Search Console, detailing the changes made, including the shift to a more reliable hosting platform.

Structured Data Issue

The Structured Data Issue Google penalty is applied to websites that misuse structured data markup, either by providing inaccurate information or by manipulating markup to mislead search engines and users.

This penalty ensures that the rich snippets displayed in search results accurately represent the content on the webpage, maintaining the integrity and usefulness of search results.

How To Recover

To resolve a Structured Data Issue Google penalty, it’s crucial to review and correct your website’s structured data markup, ensuring it accurately represents your content and complies with Google’s guidelines.

After rectifying the inaccuracies or manipulations in your structured data, submit a reconsideration request via Google Search Console, clearly documenting the changes implemented.

This process is pivotal in restoring your site’s standing and the credibility of your structured data in search results.

User-Generated Spam

The User-Generated Spam Google penalty is levied on websites that allow spammy content generated by users, such as in comments, forums, or user profiles.

This penalty aims to uphold the quality of content and prevent the dilution of search results with irrelevant or manipulative links and text.

Addressing this issue involves implementing stricter moderation and filtering measures to prevent spam from appearing on your site.

How To Recover

To recover from a User-Generated Spam Google penalty, it’s essential to enhance moderation and implement robust filters to detect and remove spammy content created by users on your site.

After ensuring all user-generated spam is addressed and preventive measures are in place, submit a reconsideration request through Google Search Console, detailing the actions taken to resolve the issue.

Discover Policy Violation: Adult-Themed Content

The Discover Policy Violation: Adult-Themed Content Spam Google penalty targets content that violates Google’s Discover guidelines by including or promoting adult-themed material in a way that doesn’t adhere to the platform’s content policies.

Websites penalised under this category need to review and modify their content to comply with Google’s standards, focusing on removing explicit material or content that could be interpreted as adult-themed spam.

How To Recover

To address the Discover Policy Violation: Adult-Themed Content Spam Google penalty, carefully review your content featured in Google Discover to ensure it aligns with Google’s family-friendly guidelines, removing or modifying any material that could be considered adult-themed.

After making the necessary adjustments to comply with Google’s standards, request a review through Google’s appropriate channels to have your content reassessed and the penalty lifted.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Dangerous Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Dangerous Content penalty by Google is enforced on content considered harmful or promoting dangerous activities, not aligning with the platform’s guidelines for safe and trustworthy information.

This can include content that incites violence, promotes hazardous behaviours, or disseminates misleading health information.

Publishers need to reassess and revise their content to ensure it doesn’t pose risks to users or propagate harmful practices, adhering to Google’s standards for responsible information sharing.

How To Recover

To resolve the News and Discover Policy Violation: Dangerous Content Google penalty, it’s crucial to thoroughly review and amend any content that violates Google’s guidelines on promoting safe and accurate information.

After making necessary changes to ensure content complies with Google’s safety standards, request a review through the appropriate Google platform to have your content reassessed and the penalty lifted.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Harassing Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Harassing Content penalty is enforced for content deemed to be bullying, intimidating, or demeaning, violating Google’s standards for respectful and safe communication.

Content creators must reassess and revise their material to eliminate any harassing elements, ensuring it aligns with Google’s commitment to fostering positive online interactions.

How To Recover

To navigate away from the News and Discover Policy Violation: Harassing Content Google penalty, thoroughly review and modify any content on your site that could be perceived as harassing or demeaning, ensuring it adheres to Google’s guidelines for respectful discourse.

Following these revisions, submit a request for review through Google’s designated channels for News and Discover content, detailing the changes made to promote a positive and harassment-free online environment.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Hateful Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Hateful Content penalty applies to content promoting hate or discrimination, violating Google’s standards for fostering inclusive and respectful discourse.

How To Recover

To address the News and Discover Policy Violation: Hateful Content Google penalty, it’s essential to scrutinise and rectify any content that may propagate hate or discrimination, ensuring it conforms to Google’s guidelines advocating for respect and inclusivity.

After revising such content, a review request should be submitted via Google’s designated channels for News and Discover, illustrating the efforts taken to cultivate a more positive and inclusive online environment.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Manipulated Media

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Manipulated Media penalty is issued for content featuring media that’s been altered in a way that’s misleading or deceptive, conflicting with Google’s emphasis on authenticity and accuracy in information dissemination.

How To Recover

To recover from the News and Discover Policy Violation: Manipulated Media penalty, ensure that all media content on your platform is genuine and free from deceptive alterations.

Following the correction of such content, submit a review request through Google’s designated channels for News and Discover, detailing the steps taken to uphold transparency and accuracy in your media presentations.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Medical Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Medical Content penalty targets misleading or potentially harmful medical information, ensuring content aligns with Google’s standards for accuracy and safety.

How To Recover

To lift the News and Discover Policy Violation: Medical Content penalty, ensure your medical content is rigorously reviewed and revised to align with recognised medical standards and evidence-based information.

Submitting a comprehensive review request through Google’s channels, detailing your content’s alignment with medical accuracy and safety guidelines, is crucial.

Discover Policy Violation: Misleading Content

The Discover Policy Violation: Misleading Content penalty targets content that deceives or misinforms users, ensuring integrity and trust in the information presented on Google’s Discover platform.

How To Recover

To overcome the Discover Policy Violation: Misleading Content penalty, meticulously review and amend any content that could be interpreted as deceptive or inaccurate.

After ensuring your content is transparent and factual, request a review through Google’s Discover platform, detailing the corrections made.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Sexually Explicit Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Sexually Explicit Content penalty is applied to content that features or promotes explicit material, ensuring that Google’s platforms maintain a safe and respectful environment.

How To Recover

To resolve the News and Discover Policy Violation: Sexually Explicit Content penalty, thoroughly review your content to ensure it adheres to Google’s standards regarding explicit material.

After making the necessary adjustments to comply with these guidelines, submit a review request through Google’s designated channels for News and Discover.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Terrorist Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Terrorist Content penalty is enforced against content promoting or glorifying terrorism, aligning with Google’s commitment to safety and security.

To rectify this, content must be reviewed and revised to ensure compliance with Google’s guidelines, followed by a review request through the appropriate Google channels.

How To Recover

To address the News and Discover Policy Violation: Terrorist Content penalty, ensure your content is devoid of any material that could be perceived as promoting or glorifying terrorism.

After revising your content to align with Google’s safety standards, submit a request for review through the appropriate channels within Google’s platform for News and Discover.

News Policy Violation: Transparency

The News Policy Violation: Transparency penalty is levied on news content that lacks clear disclosure about the information’s sources, authorship, and the organisation’s editorial processes, which is crucial for maintaining trust and credibility in news dissemination.

How To Recover

To navigate away from the News Policy Violation: Transparency penalty, ensure your news content clearly outlines the sources, authorship, and editorial processes involved in its creation.

After implementing these transparency measures, submit a review request through Google’s designated channels for news content, detailing the steps taken to enhance openness and credibility.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Violence and Gore Content

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Violence and Gore Content penalty targets content depicting excessive violence or gore, aligning with Google’s commitment to prevent the spread of graphic material.

How To Recover

To recover from the News and Discover Policy Violation: Violence and Gore Content penalty, it’s essential to thoroughly review and remove any content that graphically depicts violence or gore, ensuring compliance with Google’s content standards.

After making the necessary changes, submit a reconsideration request through Google’s platform, highlighting your efforts to adhere to the guidelines.

News and Discover Policy Violation: Vulgar Language and Profanity

The News and Discover Policy Violation: Vulgar Language and Profanity penalty addresses content containing excessive or inappropriate language that doesn’t meet Google’s standards for respectful communication.

How To Recover

To move past the News and Discover Policy Violation: Vulgar Language and Profanity penalty, it’s crucial to meticulously review and cleanse your content of any offensive language, ensuring it aligns with Google’s standards for decorum and professionalism.

Following these adjustments, submit a request for review through Google’s designated channels, clearly outlining the measures taken to enhance the language quality of your content.

Google Search Console Spam Policies

Google spam policies aim to protect users and improve the quality of search results.

Here are the most common spam policies for Google web searches:

• Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content to users and search engines with the intent to manipulate search rankings and mislead users.
• Doorways are sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries. They lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.
• Expired domain abuse is where an expired domain name is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users.
• Hacked content is any content placed on a site without permission, due to vulnerabilities in a site’s security. Hacked content gives poor search results to our users and can potentially install malicious content on their machines.
• Hidden text or links is the act of placing content on a page in a way solely to manipulate search engines and not to be easily viewable by human visitors.
• Machine-generated traffic consumes resources and interferes with our ability to best serve users
• Scaled content abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users

The spam policies detail the behaviours and tactics that can lead to a page or an entire site being ranked lower or completely omitted from Google Search.

Is it important to keep up-to-date on Google Penalty News?

Google penalty news is very important for SEO specialists to keep up with, so understand what manual action penalties are being branded out.

Core algorithm updates and spam updates in Google Penalty News are also important to learn what niches are hit the hardest or what strategies are being targeted.

The latest news on Google penalties helps you learn about all the major reasons for algorithmic penalties and manual actions and get website recovery and prevention tips.

Can customers hire a penalty recovery expert?

Many customers hire a penalty recovery expert to revoke manual action penalties from their website.

The SEO algorithm ranking factors can change and many website owners if employing an SEO agency who dont keep upto date with what is working can get penalised.

Businesses looking to create sales or sell products online need a penalty checker system in place to not only track notifications in GSC, but also track meta rankings with tools like SEO testing.

A website recovery expert understand the problem and can fix any URL for your domain and report back quickly via the reconsideration request approach.

Summary

Understanding Google’s algorithm penalties is crucial for maintaining a website’s search visibility and credibility. These penalties are Google’s way of enforcing quality standards, targeting manipulative or low-quality content and practices.

Recognising the reasons behind these penalties allows website owners to enhance their content’s relevance and user experience.

Recovering from these penalties typically involves identifying the issues, making necessary changes, and submitting a reconsideration request to Google, demonstrating a commitment to adhering to Google’s guidelines and improving the web ecosystem.