Site penalized by google

[edward-may]

I noticed for a while that our competitors don't rank for any keywords organically and they are using paid ads to gain traffic.  They have been in the industry for over 6 years and we are only new and have ranked above them already.  How can we find out if a competitor has been penalized?

Thanks

[kushvision]

There is no way to check if a competitor is being penalized for sure. The only way is if you have access to the google webmaster tools for that site. Sorry to break the bad news to you lol

[edward-may]

lol thanks!

[MarieHaynes]

If they're received a sitewide manual penalty and have been deindexed, then you should see no results when you Google, "site:theirdomain.com".

But, more likely, if they're struggling to rank it's because of an algorithmic issue.  You could try looking at their data on SEMrush.com and seeing if there is a drop that coincides the date of a known algorithm change as seen on http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change.

Ultimately though it's just a guess.

[edward-may]

Thanks Marie!