Is There Such Thing as Minor Penalties or Restrictions?

[wearehappymedia]

Hello Mozzers

So generally its said that when a site receives a penalty from Google - it's obvious - you can't miss it...

But does google apply minor penalties (say dropping 5-10 places for one not so great link)

One particular campaign we've been working pretty hard - really great stuff - all white hat techniques - but there were a couple of links I wasn't 100% sure on - but got them any way as I guessed that the effect of them, if not positive, would be neutral at worse... (The sites wen't obvious spam sites but just seemed 'not great')

Recently after, we dropped around 8 place for our main keyword ranking. It's not a very competitive space. Is this likely just standard inexplicable fluctuation, or is there such thing as minor penalties or restrictions?

Cheeers

[seanginnaw]

Hey Radi,

Historically there used to be 'Site-wide' and 'Partial' penalties for link spamming.

SEOValley covered this pretty well here - http://www.seovalley.com/blog/googles-manual-penalty-site-wide-matches-vs-partial-matches.html

If you've been hit with either one of these, it should appear in Google Search Console.

What you're referring to might be a more small-scale fluctuation that might indeed be based on a couple of the links that you weren't so sure on. Check the competitive landscape of the page and, if other sites haven't been improving their SEO substantially, consider evaluating those links you've acquired and remove them if you're not 100% sure.

Cheers,

Sean

[solvid]

Hi Radi,

It's hard to say, but with the new penguin update, there is a chance that certain parts or pages of your site might have been affected by the new penguin as a result of spam signals, but there is still a lot of uncertainty.

Here is what Google said: "Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site."

They said "adjusting ranking" as opposed to penalisation, which looks like your situation.

More about it here: https://moz.com/blog/penguin-4-was-it-worth-the-wait

I hope this helps!

Thanks,