Does this loss of traffic look familiar?
The site in this example has been hit by Google Penguin 2.0 in May 2013 and then got hit again by Google Penguin 2.1 in October 2013. It lost a massive amount of traffic in May, but by the time Penguin 2.1 came along it had lost pretty much all its traffic. Penguin 2.1 was the final nail in the coffin for this site and traffic was virtually zero.
Has your website seen a similar hit? Here are some notable dates that may help you determine if your site has a Penguin Penalty:
- Penguin 1.0 (AKA Penguin 1) was released on April 24, 2012 (this affected around 3.1% of Google searches)
- Penguin 1.1 (AKA Penguin 2) was released on May 26, 2012 (this affected less than 0.1% of Google searches)
- Penguin 1.2 (AKA Penguin 3) was released on October 5, 2012 (this affected around 0.3% of Google searches)
- Penguin 2.0 (AKA Penguin 4) was released on May 22, 2013 (this affected 2.3% of Google searches)
- Penguin 2.1 (AKA Penguin 5) was released on Oct. 4, 2013 (this affected around 1% of Google searches)
If your site lost a considerable amount of traffic and rankings on or around one of these dates it is highly likely that you have been hit by a Google Penguin Penalty. If your loss of traffic was on a different date then it is still possible that it was a Penguin penalty, especially if something radical happened with the links that link to your site.
An easy way to spot a Penguin Penalty is to compare your rankings in Google with your rankings in Bing and Yahoo. If you are still ranking in Bing and Yahoo, then it is almost certainly a Google Penguin Penalty that you are suffering from.
If you have lost your traffic because of a Google Penguin penalty it can be either a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty. Manual penalties are the act of a human who has spotted something unnatural in the way that other sites are linking to your site and has made a decision to devalue your site and push it down in the rankings to punish you. Algorithmic penalties are where a mathematical algorithm has been applied. We are not certain on the exact number, but it seems that if more than 70% of the links to your site are what we classify as toxic or suspicious then this can trigger the Penguin Penalty automatically.
So what can you do to recover your Google rankings?
We have put together a free download with a step by step guide to help you get rid of your penalty and recover your rankings. This is a simple plan of action with all the steps that you need to do to remove your Google Penalty and recover your rankings.
Just put your email in the box below and we will send it to you immediately. This is your first and most important step to getting your site back where it should be.
