4 ways to test manual penalty on a domain
So we found a domain that looked good to us: it was a legitimate website and not used as a PBN in the past (we will check it through Archive), it has good inbound links, it suits us in terms of niche and we really want to purchase it, though wait! If the same domain has manual punishment from Google – its value drops significantly in terms of SEO , which is not said to drop to 0 and therefore it is worth to locate the penalty before building on the domain a website and invest as happened to me several times before.
So how do you do the test?
For starters, simply go to Google (you can do this before purchasing the domain) and run a SITE command on the domain, for example: site: www.newdomain.co.il
If there is a single page (also enough 1 page) it is a sign that there is no manual penalty on the domain. If there is no result, you need to go to step two – checking through Google’s address shortening service. (Incidentally, the fact that there is no indexing result does not necessarily mean that there is manual punishment). If so – if there is no index, the domain has not been in the air for a long time, which means that it is worth building the new website and waiting at least two months for making links to money websites.
In contrast – if there is full indexing – in most cases it is a matter of a few days until links can be extracted from the same PBN).
If I have already mentioned the linking timing – it is very important not to remove links until the website is not “due” to it. What it means? There are all kinds of rules of thumb I’ve heard like the one that has to wait exactly 36 days until links are removed from PBN.
I personally do not believe in defined times that are appropriate for all the domains in the world. What I do is – I pick up a new website on the domain, and every few days run a SITE command on Google. As soon as I see that all the pages that no longer exist have been removed from the index + all the new pages I have created on the website are indexed – this is the sign that links can be made to the money websites.
Let’s go back to the moment where we checked on Google if there was an index of any page and found out it wasn’t. So, what now?
Go to: https://goo.gl
And that’s where they try to shorten the link through Google’s service. Many times, if you try to shorten an address that has a manual penalty on it – Google will tell you that it is not ready for the penalty domain. This is another nice way to know if there is a manual penalty on the domain or is it clean.
Another option to recognize: Paste your domain address on Facebook at chat with someone or at a post and see if the address is blocked or not. Notice that this is just an indication and not an exact science since Facebook is not Google, I have come to see websites that are blocked on Facebook but Google are starring, and yet in my opinion this is a method to recognize if it exists if necessary.
Unless we didn’t succeed in any other way, we will turn to the consul who, unlike the other ways, will give us an unambiguous answer:
Connect the domain to the console (verifying ownership). Note that you need to open a new gmail user for that matter, don’t use chrome, use VPN, etc. so that there is no indication to Google that the support website is related to your money websites that are probably under your GMAIL account.
Then go into the console, then the menu on the right under “Search Traffic” has an option called “Manual Operations”. Clicked it and or there will be listed “No manual spam actions found online”, or there will be an explanation that the domain received a manual penalty + the reason.
In 99% of the time I don’t think it’s worth trying to save a domain and send Google a request that the website be fixed, it’s a lot of work and time and in some cases it doesn’t work either, so in most cases it is recommended to simply skip to the next domain. (Google’s service to organic SEO is not at its peak).
so that’s it! The truth is that there is another really interesting 1 screen in the console that you can learn from full-fledged, I will try to pick up on some post or another.
If you know another way to test manual punishment, if you have a way to add to the script, or have a question – don’t be shy, ask!
Good luck!
