How can I check if my site has a google penalty

web site dropped for main search term

[vanessa19]

Please could anyone tell me how to check if my site has a penalty.
For a whole year now my site is not listed for my main two search terms when it was position one for a few years. My main search term is the same as the domain name and business name. Could this be the problem?

[bava_seo]

The Same problem iam also facing at present
Few of my keywords are listed on top of 50 position in google, but one fine morning suddenly they got disappeared from the listings. if google has penalised the site(page) for that particular keywords then what might be the reasons why google has penalised the site (or)is there any way to find out for what reason my site is penalised for particular keywords?

your experiences, views , opinions are most welcome

[vanessa19]

Hi
Thank you for your response
My site is a co.uk and when I add UK to my search term is ranks number one but without the UK it is not listed at all.

[surrealillusions]

could be any number of reasons

black hat seo techniques, links to and from wrong or unrelated sites, spam attempts from your domain name etc etc..

Or maybe your rivals have used black hat techniques to give them a quick rise in the rankings...or maybe they've used white hat techniques recently, either themselves or hiring an seo company and have had a surge in the rankings.

Theres alot of factors

:)

[vanessa19]

Is there a tool that can determine if the site has a penalty? or contact at Google?

[MadeWillis]

Unless you personally know someone at Google, you are not likely to get a response from them.

There are too many factors that could lead to your site dropping like that and without knowing the history of your site and all changes made to it, it can be difficult to tell what is going on.

Set yourself up on Google's Webmaster Tools and submit your Google sitemap (if you are not already doing this). That is pretty simple to do and can be used as a good starting point.