Google: Only Site Owner Can See If They Have A Penalty; Not Third-Party Tools

Dec 13, 2016 - 8:22 am 41 by

Bars3 Google 1200

Google's John Mueller said in a Google Webmaster Help thread that any of those third-party Google penalty checker tools are not valid. In fact, he said the only folks outside of Google who can check if a site has a penalty are those with access to your site in the Google Search Console.

In Google Search Console it shows manual actions, it does not show automated actions like Penguin, Panda or other animals. No tool really can that webmasters might have access to.

Google does have their own internal tool, I believe to check both manual and automated penalties. We caught a screen shot of it on a Googlers machine once back in 2015 named the Google penalty server. But only Googlers have access to that.

John Mueller wrote in the thread, "PS the "penalty checker" tool isn't affiliated with Google. There's no way for someone outside of the owner (through Search Console) to check a site for a manual action."

So really, those third-party tools aren't a really good way to see if you have a penalty with Google.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

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