How to check my site for Panda, Penquin, etc.

[Discount Mall]

Is there a tool that check my site for panda, penguin, etc.?
Thanks.

[Andy Langton]

There are various "penalty checkers" that you'll find searching for Google, which we won't list in this thread (our members probably made some of them, so we need to avoid such things in the interest of fairness!).

Such tools typically have:

- A predefined list of keywords that they check rankings for
- A record of wherre your site ranked for those predefined keywords
- A list of when they believe Google updates happened

If any of the predefined rankings drop at the same time as a Google update, they will tell you you were penalised. This may or may not be nonsense depending on your particular site, which keywords they happened to be monitoring, and what you did at the time of the update. These tools never get keywords right, although they may include some of interest, particularly for busier sites.

If you don't have any direct access to a site, and want to assess penalties then this data is better than nothing. If you do have direct access to a site, then you have much more powerful tools at your disposal - a record of what changes were made, analytics data which will confirm drops, you may have your own ranking data and, of course, your own insight. For instance, if you have a 10-page small business site, it's not going to be a likely Panda victim. If you have very few links, you are unlikely to be affected by Penguin. Judgement is key.

[aristotle]

If some of your articles have been scraped and re-published on other websites, and if those scraped copies rank higher than than your originals, that's an indication that your site is under a penalty.

[Discount Mall]

Thank you all, it is a matter of using the wright keywords to search.

[londrum]

Is there a tool that check my site for panda, penguin, etc.?

There are various "penalty checkers" that you'll find searching for Google, which we won't list in this thread

...welcome to webmasterworld

[Andy Langton]

...welcome to webmasterworld

I did mention one of the reasons to avoid such mentions in my post above, and there are other forum-moderation-type reasons in the forum charter [webmasterworld.com]. However, it's not just a matter of forum policy. The widely-available tools do not diagnose penalties accurately at all IMO, and they are primarily of use to those who already have a good understanding of penalties who want areas to explore. For the uninitiated, they can be totally misleading. I didn't find a huge amount of direct mentions on WebmasterWorld with a quick search, but those that I did highlight this point. For instance, are these pirate penalty [webmasterworld.com] and -30 penalty [webmasterworld.com] diagnoses accurate?

Most tools are using one of the third-party ranking databases (SearchMetrics, Semrush, Spyfu, etc.). It's a totally separate discussion, but these databases in themselves can't be taken at face value. They simply don't correlate to actual organic data. So, if you are assessing a site without access to any analytics or other data, then they might provide a decent starting point. If it's your own site, relying on these databases would be a crazy thing to do.

Diagnosing penalties is never straightforward, and we would be doing members a disservice if we suggested they could go to a "penalty checker" and obtain any real insight into their site's performance. For those that want to do so regardless, you'll find such tools with almost any reasonable Google search.

[tangor]

As far as I know there are no doctors who can diagnose "pandacitus" or "penguinitis", both of which are ultimately deadly and have no known cures. One can aggressively treat the symptoms and keep the patient alive, if somewhat discomforted, until all hope (or time and funds) has been exhausted.

^{(If not obvious, the above is dark satire, and a caution to look at any "treatments" with a critical eye!)}

[Wilburforce]

A doctor won't be able to diagnose penguinitis (inflammation of the penguin) unless you take the penguin with you when you visit the surgery. Inflamed penguins are dangerous, as we all know.

[not2easy]

Might be better to seek a penguinectomy?

[Wilburforce]

Might be better to seek a penguinectomy?

Penguinectomy is usually only advised in cases of penguinosis (abnormality of the penguin).

In the majority if cases, changes in the state of a penguin are benign, but in a few instances (fewer than 2% of cases, according to one authority) it can lead to long-term and serious ill-health. If you notice a sudden change in the size or behaviour of your penguin you should report to a clinic as soon as possible.

_{Edit: it is important not to confuse Irritable Penguin Syndrome with penguinosis. In Irritable Penguin Syndrome the cause of the patient's condition is unclear, but s/he attributes the symptoms to a recent penguin attack, and becomes irritable.}

[Discount Mall]

I want to thank you all for stopping by and share your knowledge, much appreciated.
Some of the tools tells me that the site is NOT penalized and other does not say it but they tell me how to find out if it was penalized which give an indication since there is nothing under google.com/webmasters/tools/ that indicate a penalty.

Here is a clear shot of the site traffic
[i.imgur.com...]

What do you make of that?

[Discount Mall]

Any Thoughts?

[aakk9999]

Have you got a screenshot of a longer period of traffic pattern? Something around 12 months? It is difficult to draw the conclusion from 6 days of traffic without knowing what is the general pattern of your traffic.

[Discount Mall]

This is 6 years data, from Jan 2010 - Jan 2016

[aakk9999]

This is 6 years data, from Jan 2010 - Jan 2016

I have completely misread the chart thinking it is six days in January - thanks on the clarification!

I think we do not know enough here to be able to give you the answer, but what we can do is to tell you which way to go in analysing yourself.

Have you tried to overlay the traffic pattern against the dates of Panda/Penguin runs? Do they match?
Have you tried to analyse whether you have lost the traffic across all keywords/landing pages or only a subset?
If the site had only a few keywords that drowe the traffic and these were hit, then you could see a significant traffic loss.

Also, it could just be a classic sign of site losing the traffic owing to constant algo changes and increased competition. Weighing the algo to have a larger branded site with less relevant page to rank instead of narrowly focused small site could also result in a significant traffic loss.

[Andy Langton]

Also, is this actually traffic? That looks like an estimate from a 'rank tracking' service, which makes it unreliable.

[RedBar]

Here is a clear shot of the site traffic

That looks like some of my sites that lost 90+% of their image traffic!

[Discount Mall]

Probably it is an estimate but the graph tells the story.