Penalized by Google - When will my keywords return?

[rinor81]

Hey guys,
I think it's more than 3 months now since I did some mistake and got penalized by google for 2 keywords I promoted for my site.
I was ranked in page 2 of google for those both keywords and after I was penalized they were gone of-course.
Now, I think more than 3 months they are still not showing my site in google...any idea when and where they'll return? Any way to find this out?

Thank you.

[tj]

Move on and create a similar one instead of being worried for 90 days about if this particular site is back in the Google Results. Sometimes it takes up to 12 weeks before a site is listed back in the results, sometimes they are never back.

Timo

[dburk]

Hi rinor81,

This sounds like our weekly "I've been penalized by Google" thread that turns out to be a misunderstanding of how Google ranks pages.

Relax!

You probably have not been penalized. Most of these threads end with the realization that you simply haven't earned those rankings yet.

I know, I know.. next you will say "but my page was ranked at position X and then it suddenly dropped". Then we will say that it was just QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) that temporarily boosted your page's rankings and after the temporary boost wore off your page has now sunk to it's truly earned rankings.

You may ask "What if I have held those rankings for the past X number of years?" In that case it's probably not QDF, so let us know if that's the case!

Google doesn't penalize on a keyword by keyword basis. They only penalize you if you violate their Webmaster Guidelines, and the penalty is the complete removal from their index. You don't drop rankings for one particular keyword, you disappear completely from any and all search queries.

So how do you tell if you have really been penalized by Google? It's easy, just do a search using the "site:" operator followed by your domain name. If any results are returned then your website has not been penalized.

This is where these threads usually end, with the recommendation that you go out and earn those rankings by using solid promotional techniques.

This happens so frequently on this forum I think we should create a new term for it: The QDF Mind Trick. Like the Jedi mind trick from the movie Star Wars ("Theses aren't the droids you're looking for") These aren't the rankings you've earned. You can go about your business. Move along!

YouTube - these aren't the droids you're looking...

[rinor81]

Thanks for the reply guys but I am sure I was penalized since I submitted to 7,000+ backlinks out of stupidity and it was way way way above average or regular.
More than that, this site is not new and is up for almost 4 years now so Google does not "look" where to rank it or so on.

As for building a new site I won't, since this site has a PR 3 that took me too much time and effort to achieve and it has a nice Alexa rank as well.

So you tell me if I wasn't penalized...just interests me to know if there is a way to know if those keywords will be back to show my site.

Thanks.

[rinor81]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi rinor81,

This sounds like our weekly "I've been penalized by Google" thread that turns out to be a misunderstanding of how Google ranks pages.

Relax!

You probably have not been penalized. Most of these threads end with the realization that you simply haven't earned those rankings yet.

I know, I know.. next you will say "but my page was ranked at position X and then it suddenly dropped". Then we will say that it was just QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) that temporarily boosted your page's rankings and after the temporary boost wore off your page has now sunk to it's truly earned rankings.

You may ask "What if I have held those rankings for the past X number of years?" In that case it's probably not QDF, so let us know if that's the case!

Google doesn't penalize on a keyword by keyword basis. They only penalize you if you violate their Webmaster Guidelines, and the penalty is the complete removal from their index. You don't drop rankings for one particular keyword, you disappear completely from any and all search queries.

So how do you tell if you have really been penalized by Google? It's easy, just do a search using the "site:" operator followed by your domain name. If any results are returned then your website has not been penalized.

This is where these threads usually end, with the recommendation that you go out and earn those rankings by using solid promotional techniques.

This happens so frequently on this forum I think we should create a new term for it: The QDF Mind Trick. Like the Jedi mind trick from the movie Star Wars ("Theses aren't the droids you're looking for") These aren't the rankings you've earned. You can go about your business. Move along!

YouTube - these aren't the droids you're looking for

Hey there,
Thanks for a very good answer, I did the site:my site like you suggested and yes my site is indexed, a lot!
So according to you and this, it means I was not penalized but just did not earn my rankings? So now it's off-page SEO for those keywords?

Thank you again!