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Got a website penalty? Click here to get help right now…
…Or follow my step by step Google penalty recovery process.
It’s an awful feeling, isn’t it?
One day you close your laptop safe in the knowledge that your site is getting healthy amounts of search traffic.
Then, the next morning, you find out your site has been hit with a Google Penalty.
What was once a solid stream of targeted traffic is now nothing more than a trickle of slightly interested people.
But you can come back from this.
- The first step is to know which Google Penalty has stung you and why you’ve been penalised.
- The second step is to know how to monitor for future algorithm changes to make sure it doesn’t happen to you again.
In this article I’m going to share with you seven Google penalty checker tools.
These tools will allow you to see exactly which update is to blame, and how you can future-proof yourself against future penalties.
In fact:
We ran these exact tests (to get case studies) on this site before we boosted search traffic 14x!
What Will I Learn?
Identify The Penalty Before You Make Any Changes
A lot of Webmasters start trying to change parts of their site before they’ve found out what’s caused the problem.
Not only is this a dumb move, it can also go on to make problems worse in the long run.
Instead of making an emotional decision you should take a step back, analyse the problem, and build a rehabilitation strategy that’s going to work for you site.
Accurately diagnosing which penalty is at play is essential to recovering your site, and it can be done in less than five minutes using one of the SEO tools on this list.
What Is A Google Penalty Checker Tool?
A Google penalty checker tool will help you to identify if your search traffic has been impacted by an algorithm update or manual actions.
It will also help you to find the source of problem and give you insights on how to fix the problem as well.
If you’ve done any link building recently, I highly suggest you run them through this link building checklist to identify any hidden problems.
7 Google Penalty Checker Tools That Make Life Easy
This list isn’t ranked in any order from best to worst, however it is a little bit split.
Tools number one to four will allow you to see the penalty that hit your site.
And tools number five to seven will help you keep an eye on Google activity and protect your site against possibly upcoming algorithm changes & Google updates.
A change in the Google algorithm can have a negative impact on your site’s performance on Google search results that’s why it is crucial to get tools that help to take manual actions.
#1 – Moz Change History
Moz maintains a very helpful page that lists all of the major algorithm updates (such as Google Panda & Google Penguin), the date they happened and additional information about the update.
You can also use this page to get further reading to help you understand how this problem might affect your site, or what could be coming in the future.
This page is updated immediately after a major change is reported so if you’ve seen a big drop-off in your results, there’s a good chance that it’s been featured here.
If you ever suspect you’ve been hit with a Google Penalty, I’d suggest you start with this tool.
#2 – Panguin Google Penalty Check Tool
The Panguin Tool from Barracuda has been around for a long time.
It’s simple, easy to use, and provides a lot of quick information for you with great user experience.
All you have to do is sign in with your Google Analytics accounts and you’ll be able to instantly see a map of your traffic data and the exact moment a Google Update went live:
The vertical lines on the graph represent the different major algorithm updates to show you the impact they could have had on your traffic.
If you click on any of the lines it’ll give you a description of the update, why it happened and what it could mean for your site.
What I also like here is that it comes with this little dashboard of icons:
This allows you to switch on and off all of the different possible causes for your drop in traffic and see through a lot of the more confusing data.
In my opinion the Panguin Tool is the best Google penalty checker on the planet.#3 – Rank Ranger
Rank Ranger combines elements of Moz’s Change History tool and their MozCast tool to bring you all the information on one screen.
It offers a deeper level of information for you about each individual update:
It’s also a little more black and white about what it considers to be an important change.
If the chart is in the green range you’re okay, once it’s red you’re in danger, and when it’s blue you don’t need to worry about anything at all.
It simplifies the information a little, while giving you a deeper insight into what might be happening.
A really cool alternative.
#4 – Fruition’s Google Penalty Checker Tool
Fruition’s Google Penalty Checker is a little known, but powerful tool for pinpointing exactly what made a difference to your site.
In order to use it you’ll need a free account set up. But once you’re in you can get a wealth of data. The first data you’ll see is a plot graph of updates how they’ve impacted your site:
It really comes into it’s own when you scroll below the fold and look at the written data.
In the chart it will show you every recent Google algorithm update, and calculate the probability that it will have changed traffic to your site:
You’re even able to see the changes in traffic that it could bring you through different devices.
And, if you’d like, you can learn more about each of the changes in further detail.
#5 – SEMRush Sensor
SEMRush Sensor is by far the most comprehensive tool on this whole list.
While Panguin is still arguably my favourite, this comes in a close second.
Taking a slightly more ‘medical’ approach it shows you a pretty precise monitor of what Google has been doing the last few days:
But you can also look at the activity within individual niches too. Which is a truly extraordinary set of results to be giving away for free.
Drilling down into the tool further you can add your own site for analysis.
Then SEMRush Sensor will look at every page and keyword you rank for and spit back a bunch of data about your personal SERP volatility-
There are a bunch of other awesome features as well and this is a tool I’d highly recommend you keep an eye on going forward.
Check out my SEMRush review to get more detailed informations about this amazing tool.
#6 – Accuranker’s Google ‘Grump’ Rating
This is one of my favourite tools for monitoring what’s going on with Google’s Algorithms.
The Grump Rating shows you how active the Google Algorithms have been updating lately, and how likely a change is going to come today – or in the next few days – that will impact your SERP rankings.
You can check this out across a range of devices and locations around the world. Giving you location specific insights for wherever you’re located.
The tool grades current Google activity at one of the following four levels:
It’s rare to see Google down at the chilled level, but I have known it drop to cautious from time to time.
You’re also able to go back and see what the activity has been like over the past few days, weeks, months or years and look for patterns in Google’s movements.
Or find where you site might have been slightly penalised in the past.
I’d recommend you check in with this tool at least once a week to keep yourself up to date with the current state of affairs and feel free to take a look at my full Accuranker review.
#7 – MozCast
If you prefer your data delivered to you in a more bite sized chunk, a good alternative to Accuranker is MozCast.
MozCast displays the current state of Google’s activity like a weather forecast, showing a daily weather report-
If the forecast is getting warmer and stormier you could be heading towards an algorithm update. And if it’s cool and clear skies, rankings will be staying where they are.
You don’t have the same level of flexibility you do with the Accurank tool, but it’s nice if you want a morning rankings report to see what’s happening on a general level.
Note: Getting a penalty can happen to anyone, even big companies with crazy budget can make mistakes. Just check out these SEO fails to see how to avoid making the same errors.
What To Do Once You’ve Identified Your Penalty
Once you have isolated the problem with a Google penalty checker tool, you can start to analyse the cause of the issue.
Remember that correlation of your search traffic dropping with an algorithm update doesn’t necessarily mean it is the update at fault!
For example your site may have been hacked and hosting malware.
If you notice that your traffic drop does correlate with an algorithm change, then that should point you in the right direction of what to look at first as a cause.
Usually, issues fall into 2 or 3 categories-
- Backlink Based – If you have a backlink based penalty that means that you’re having link building issue. To fix it you need to perform a backlink analysis thanks to a backlink audit. Link Building is for many considered as black hat SEO technic – even though, I believe that black hat/white hat SEO are stupid labels – you must be careful about how you build your backlinks to stay out of trouble.You must avoid excessive link schemes & spam links on your web page.
- Content Based – If you have a content penalty, follow this guide or this guide to perform a content audit. You can get a penalty if the algorithm detects low quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, anchor text or thin content.
- On Site Penalty – If you have an on site penalty that is not caused by thin content issues then use a tool like URLProfiler (see my full URL Profiler review) or Screaming Frog SEO Spider to analyse your site.
Many webmasters set off in the wrong direction from the get go, so make sure you take time to understand why the site dropped on the search results with the Google penalty checker tools before taking any action.
Once you identified the root cause and fixed the issue, submit a ‘reconsideration request’ to let Google knows.
And remember, penalties can be avoided if you follow Google good practices and follow my 45+ steps SEO checklist.
Pro tip: If you’re not penalised but simply stuck in the Google Sandbox, check this guide to learn how to get out of the Google Sandbox as quickly as possible.
Remember the Google Sandbox is a testing ground for new websites. It’s unlikely that a penalty checker tool will be able to identify if your website is in the sandbox or not.
Google Penalty Recovery Services
The easiest way to fix a Google penalty is to have someone else fix it for you.My agency has a 100% recovery success rate like this site that went from penalty to 114 number 1 rankings.
If you want my personal SEO team to take care of your Google penalty, then use our Google penalty recovery service!
We’ll also make sure that your website respects Google’s Webmaster Guidelines – with a clean link profile and high-quality content – so you don’t get other penalties.
Feeling brave? You can try to remove your penalty by yourself following my Google penalty recovery guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Use Penalty Checker Tools to find out why you have been given the penalty.
- Once you understand why you got penalised, start working on fixing your website to adhere to Google's guidelines.
- Submit a reconsideration request to Google.
- Put a plan in place to ensure that they do not reoccur.
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What Are Your Thoughts?
284 Responses
Hi Matthew,You really did some good research and wrote about this great tools in your blog post, but I feel as a blogger very few guys will be able to spend that much money to use the tools that are listed here! These tools are perfect for digital marketing pros.- Subh
No problem Subh glad to be of service
Recently my site got hit by the recent update and I was feeling down as i wasn’t able to find out the cause of my penalty. After seeing your post I got some inspiration to move forward, Could you please suggest what should we avoid from getting penalties? I have noticed that 2 of websites are in same condition. Thanks dear
Well which penalty do you have?
I see. Thanks Matthew for responding! 🙂
Thanks for the tips Matthew! 🙂 This is very helpful! I was wondering, how do you make sure to avoid getting any penalty?
Just do regular site audits and monitor your links
You shared an really useful information for checking website penalty stats.your blog post are very nice and useful for me. Thank you so much for sharing this post.
No problem glad to help!
Hi, Matthew,These are some of the best tools to check any penalties that you site have received. Thanks God! I didn’t received any penalty so far. My favorite tool is MOZ change history checker, Its helps me to aware myself with latest algorithm updates., which helps me to take quick decision on my site’s SEO. Thanks for bringing up this useful tools.Have a great Day :)Vishwajeet
Yeah and they usually update it pretty quick as well!
These are very helpful ways that I can call but, I’m just frustrated with these things because they make everyday difficult with updates. Just a quick joke,Thanks for the quick share.
Well SEO certainly keeps you on your toes!
Hi Matthew, You’ve featured some of the exciting tools to check the penalty of a site. In fact, I’ve not used any of them before, but from now on, I’m very much interested in using,,,Hope to see more great posts like this one, SM
No problem glad to have helped!
Hey, thanks for this Article, please tell me a tool which detects the cause of the Google update.
Did you read the article?
Hey, Matt!Oh wow! I used to use Fruition back in the time and found it to be the good tool for the task it is designed for!It is my luck or what, I don’t know but I did not feel I ever got into the penalty but it is better to confirm how I am doing. :)So, thank you for the great list of awesome tools!~ Adeel
No problem Adeel!
Thanks a lot for sharing this great article with us. Your article is very informative and useful. With the tools that you discussed above, it would be very easy to recover a penalised site.
No problem 🙂
Now, this is the list you can say very useful. I experimented with all the tools, haha. You probably have them tested too, right Matthew? Though none of my websites were penalized, it seems I need to work a lot on the main ones. The latest update did show approx. 50% effect on few sites.Added to my post sticks.
Glad it helped you out!
Very Good article.! Thanks for sharing nice information. i think not for beginner but nice
Glad to help!
Thanks for Sharing Google Penalty Checker tools
No problem!
Thanks @matthew sharing informative post.
No problem Akki!
Apart from typical informative articles on Digital Marketing,this one is quite unique.Thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Amazing article….thanks for sharing
No problem!
Great article Matthew.Should help me solve some problems in the future 🙂
I hope so 🙂
I have been using most of these tools and they have been very useful when analyzing sudden web traffic changes.
And most of them are free to use as well 🙂
Thanks Matthew for Providing These 7 Google Penalty information :)RegardsSoni
Glad to be of servie!
good tools and good informations . thak you mathew !
No problem!
Hi Matthew,It’s nice to know that you can recover from a Google penalty. One of my past sites got hit from a penalty back in the day.I had no clue how to fix it or who to turn to. Before the penalty, my site had a few number one spots and was actually making money.After the update, the site fell like a rock. I lost pretty much all my income overnight.Instead of trying to fix the site or being bothered with it, I let the site go. (I really didn’t care about the niche anyway). With my current site, I am no longer focused 100% on SEO. While I still make sure my posts are properly optimized, I don’t stress it. So hopefully, I won’t get hit with another penalty. If I do, you can bet that I’ll be using one of these tools. I may even have to call on your services to take care of it. Thanks for taking the time to share these tools with us, I know that they will help so many bloggers out. Have a great day :)Susan
Yes of course you can, we have a number of case studies at https://www.searchlogistics.com/case-studies/ showing recoveries
Nice job Matthew you’re sharing a very useful article. Thanks for sharing it.
No problem!
Hi Matthew,Yes, Any Google updates whether it’s both Panda and Penguin definitely gives a bad hit for your blog/website. You have highlighted tools for checking the Panda and Penguin Update is just great. I am sure it would definitely help. Thanks for the share!!
No problem my friend!
Some handy tools I will definitely have to check out, thanks!
No problem!
Hi, I am Vikash Kumar from India.I love your writing.This post is one of the helpful posts for me. This post saved my lots of time.Thanks.
No worrys!
Great tips. Your articles are very helpful. Let’s go to the next
No problem 🙂
It’s rather useful that some of these tools complement each other to produce a comprehensive overview of the site for the owners, making it easier to pinpoint the cause of the penalty.
Yeah they sure do!
love your blog ! it looks lovely !
Thanks!
Fruitionis super cool, never heard of it thanks Matt! One thing I gotta mention if you go into the SEMrush organic view that superimposes all google updates with rankings and your own notes, it’s incredible, you’d dig it!
Awesome extra tip thanks!
finally i found that my site is hit by Panda in 2103, now its time to work and restore its ranking
Great to hear, run it through DeepCrawl and fix everything it tells you.
Hello Sir, Nice article. After doing all the things what you told I came to a conclusion that my website is affected by panda or penguin effect. Please help me how to solve this problem and get my website back.
Well which one is it?
Great article, I planning on using a few of those tools you posted thanks for all the great information you provide to us
No problem Fred!
Hey! Matthew again a great information read in your site. Thanks men for increasing my knowledge
No problem Jai!
Cool stuff about how to recover and analyze Google algorithm update.
I hope it helps you one day
May I ask for your template?
For what?
Amazing article. I had some issue on one of my site and I you got me out of it. Thanks man
What problem did you have?
How to exit from sandbox?
Patience 🙂
Nice article, will definitely check the panguin tool!
It’s a great tool
This is a great article. Thank you.
No problem Ed!
Good articles.! Thanks for sharing nice inforamtion.
No problem Ashimc
I am getting really amazed while read your post. Thanks for sharing this good informations. It surely helpful to prevent my website from scam.
No problem Kelly!
Hi! I’m new to your site, thanks for the effort! 😀
No problem =D
An Amazing Post I seen and very happy to read that nice and usefull content thanks for share.
No problem Satta!
Ok thanks bro for share this article, your article is nice.Bro answer please my ask!Google Penalty to site use ads pop up?
No popup ads are ok, but not interstitial on mobile
your article just helped me discovered how and when some of my clients lost trafiic. Mantap
No problem 🙂
Thanks Mr Matthew.. you help beginner like me to learn how to check
Did you find anything in your checks?
Matthew Woodward thanks for sharing this informative article. After the updating of Panda and Penguin SEO become harder. Now people are using proper ways to do SEO and avoid these updates. These 2 tools are complete packages to conquer Google update
They certainly help!
Thanks .matthewThese tools help us a lot to recover a any website of google penalty. I am following your all techniques and read your every article and this is the reason i am deliver good result. Thanks Man again.
No problem Sanjeev, thanks for your continued support!
your article just helped me discovered how and when some of my clients lost trafiic.
Glad to be of service 🙂