Penalty

Penalty refers to an infraction issued to webmasters for breaking Google guidelines. Webmasters receive the infraction through Search Console and can be as serious as site removal from search engine results. Google requires that the issues be fixed before the penalty is lifted. Once the penalty is lifted, there is no guarantee that a site will return to its previous rankings in the search results. A penalty can also refer to an algorithmic penalty. An algorithmic penalty is a misnomer; meaning, the site may be performing poorly due to an issue discovered by Google\’s algorithm. An algorithm penalty is considered a ranking problem, not a Google penalty.