A common question that I get asked by website owners is “How do I know if Google has penalized / banned my website?” There are a few telltale signs that I wanted to share with you today.

1) You’re Not In The Index

The easiest way to tell if you’ve been penalized is if you’re pages aren’t showing up in Google’s index anymore. Take a keyword that you used to rank for and pop it into Google’s search box. Are you still showing up? Rankings change all the time so don’t worry if you’ve fallen from Page 1 to Page 2 – you just need to work on your SEO for that page. However, if you fall from Page 1 to not being found at all then something is wrong. Also make sure that it’s more than your homepage coming up. Sometimes if you have a minor penalty attached to your site, your homepage will appear in the index but none of your subpages.

2) Your Page Rank Drops To 0

If you had a Page Rank on your site and it suddenly drops to 0 then this could be another indication that you have been penalized. To check your Page Rank you can use the SearchStatus Firefox toolbar or pop your site into DigPageRank. Don’t panic if your website is a 0 at the start. All webpages begin without a Page Rank score when they first get started. You just have to wait for the next Page Rank update to see how you’re doing. You should worry, however, if you had a Page Rank score and then it was taken away.

3) Do A Google Search For site:http://www.YourDomain.com

A site: search helps show you a sample list of the pages Google recognizes and has indexed. For example, site:http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/ reveals over 650 results – so we’re safe! Tip: Make sure you use a lower-case “s” for the site. If you enter in “Site” it won’t work properly and you might cause yourself a mild heart attack!

4) Check Your Webmaster Tools

Google has set up its Webmaster Tools as way for website owners to connect with how Google sees their websites. If there is something wrong with your website Google will often (but not always!) tell you with a warning sign in red next to your domain name. You can also use the Webmaster Tools to see how many links you have coming to your site (that Google recognizes) as well as which pages are in its index. If you notice that some pages are missing, submit them back in so Google knows they exist!

5) Use Free Analytics Tools

There are a number of free analytics tools that can help you determine if you’ve been banned or not. One is the Check Google Ban tool created by SELF SEO. I’ve used it a couple of times on websites I thought might be banned and found it to be a useful tool.

Have you found other methods or tools valuable to determine if your site has been penalized by Google?