Can we find out if Google placed a penalty?

[Aella]

Is there any way to find out if Google might have placed any penelty on my website? The site rankings have suddenly dropped and I just want to make sure that there is no penelty.

[tedster]

You can sometimes find out about some penalties through your webmaster tools account. But it's not exactly a "full disclosure" report. One give-away for a penalty is doing a regular for your domain name, including the tld extension. If you're not #1, something is usually wrong - and often that's a sign of a penalty.

[johnlim9988]

Dear Tedster,

"doing a regular for your domain name, including the tld extension"

What is tld extension? Pls kindly give a detailed example.

Thanks.

[tedster]

What I mean is search for "example.com", or "example.co.uk" -- that is, include the extension in the search, don't just search on the character string "example".

[johnlim9988]

Hi, TEdster,

Thank for your clarification.

You also mentioned that "You can sometimes find out about some penalties through your webmaster tools account"

How to find our penalties through webmaster tools account?

Thanks.

[tedster]

Google sends you a direct message that you see when you log in. They do this mostly when they feel someone broke their webmaster guidelines innocently, not when they feel someone is trying a heavy-duty game.

[johnlim9988]

Not receive any message, then google should not penalize us, right?

[Aella]

My site used to be in the top 3 results and last month it just crashed down on the main keyword. Could be that we have new competition but I just wanted to make sure that there was no penelty.

[matrix_neo]

If you are over doing the violation google might penalise without notice in the webmastertools account. In that case you may find it yourself as tedster suggested. Try searching example.com and if you don't see example.com as the first result you may have some penalty.