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Google penalty check

15 questions to find out whether your store is breaking Google's spam policies, with a fix for every problem it flags. Free, and no sign-up.

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No tool can tell you for certain whether Google has penalised your store, whatever the “penalty checkers” promise. Search Console can tell you about a manual penalty, and nothing can tell you about an automated one. What this can do is show you where your store is exposed, and what to do about it.

Before you start, open the Manual actions report in Search Console. If someone at Google has penalised your site, it says so there, and the fix for that comes first.

Links

  • Have you, or anyone working for you, ever paid for links, “guest posts” or a “link building package”?
  • Have you sent free products or discount codes to bloggers or websites in return for a link?
  • Have you ever bought another website and redirected it to your store?

Pages and content

  • Do you have lots of near-identical pages where only the town, city or product name changes?
  • Have you added pages in bulk, with AI or a template, that nobody has read all the way through?
  • Was any of your site’s text written to get keywords in, rather than for shoppers?
  • Are most of your product descriptions copied from the supplier, or reworded from someone else’s with AI?
  • Do filtered versions of your category pages, like trainers filtered to blue, size 12, show up in Google as pages of their own?

Apps and your site

  • Have you installed an app that shows an offer, or sends people somewhere else, when they try to leave?
  • Have you found pages or blog posts on your site that nobody on your team wrote?
  • Have you seen your site in Google with pages about casinos, crypto or anything else you don’t sell?
  • Does your site send some visitors somewhere different, like mobile users to an app or people from Google to a special page?

Reviews and your blog

  • Have any of your reviews been written by staff, bought, or given in return for a freebie without saying so?
  • Have you been paid to publish someone else’s article or link on your site?
  • Can people post links in comments, reviews or Q&A on your site without anyone checking them first?

Want the background first? My post on how online shops break Google’s spam policies covers each of these with real examples.

How to fix each problem

Your results link straight to the ones that apply to you. Each is labelled as either breaking Google’s rules, which is what gets sites penalised, or a quality risk, which won’t get you penalised but can still hold a store back.

A manual action or security warning Google has already acted

If Search Console shows a manual action, someone at Google has penalised your site and the notice tells you why. An automated hit from a spam update comes with no message at all.

How to fix it

  1. Fix everything the notice mentions, not just some of it.
  2. Write down what you did.
  3. Submit a reconsideration request from the Manual actions report. Reviews take days or weeks, and a rushed one sends you back to the start.
  4. For a security issue, fix the problem, then request a review from the Security issues report.

When to get help: This is the one to get help with. A thorough first reconsideration request is much quicker than a second.

Sources: Google: Manual actions report

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Keyword stuffing and hidden text Against Google’s spam policies

Copy that repeats the same phrase in every sentence, blocks of town names, and text shoppers can’t see. It’s the problem I find most often, and AI-written category intros have made it worse.

How to fix it

  1. Read your category copy out loud and rewrite anything that sounds like it was written for a robot.
  2. Cut the long intros. Short and useful beats long and padded.
  3. Remove lists of towns you deliver to.
  4. Delete any text shoppers can’t open. Tabs and “read more” sections are fine.

When to get help: On every site where I’ve cut category copy down, positions have improved afterwards, so it’s worth doing properly across the whole site.

Sources: Google: keyword stuffingGoogle: hidden text

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Apps that hijack the back button Against Google’s spam policies since June 2026

Since June 2026 it’s been against Google’s spam policies to interfere with the back button: sending people to a page they never visited, or showing them an offer instead of letting them leave. If an app does it, it’s still your site that pays.

How to fix it

  1. Do the phone test: search Google for one of your products, tap through, press back.
  2. If you don’t land back on Google, turn off your apps one at a time until you do.
  3. Keep exit offers if you like them, as long as the back button still works.

When to get help: Get help if you can’t find which app or script is doing it.

Sources: Google: back button hijacking

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Hacked content On Google’s spam list, even though it isn’t your doing

Pages someone else has added to your site, usually about casinos or betting, often sitting there for months without Search Console flagging them. Rare on Shopify, far more common on WordPress and WooCommerce.

How to fix it

  1. Get the whole site crawled and check every page against what you’ve actually published.
  2. Delete anything you don’t recognise.
  3. Update every plugin and your theme, and change every password.
  4. If Search Console’s Security issues report shows a problem, fix it and request a review from there.

When to get help: If you’ve been hacked once, get help making sure the way in is closed, or it’ll happen again.

Sources: Google: hacked content

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Spam through your own search pages Spam on your site, even though you didn’t put it there

Spammers link to your site’s search results with their own words in the link. Google finds a page on your site showing their words and sometimes adds it to its results. Lots of Shopify stores have been hit this way.

How to fix it

  1. Ask your developer to stop your search pages, and on Shopify your empty vendor pages, from appearing in Google.
  2. Don’t redirect them to the homepage.
  3. Pass them Barry Hunter’s guide, linked below. He’s one of Google’s volunteer experts, and it covers exactly this.

When to get help: A quick fix for a developer, but worth checking it’s been done right.

Sources: Barry Hunter’s guide to internal site search spam

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Showing Google something different Against Google’s spam policies

Cloaking means showing Google a different page to the one people see. It’s rarely deliberate now. It’s usually a service that shows Google an old version of a page, or a hacked script that only redirects people arriving from Google.

How to fix it

  1. Ask your developer to compare what Google sees, using Search Console’s URL Inspection tool, with what you see on your phone.
  2. Check any redirects that only happen on mobile or for visitors from Google.
  3. Country redirects are fine, as long as Google is treated like any other visitor.

When to get help: Worth getting help with, because the cause is usually technical and not obvious.

Sources: Google: cloakingGoogle: sneaky redirects

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Fake and incentivised reviews Against Google’s review rules, and UK law

Google’s rules for review stars rule out “fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews”, and stars must be for reviews shoppers can see. In the UK, fake reviews have also been illegal since 6 April 2025.

How to fix it

  1. Remove any reviews written by staff or bought.
  2. Label any review that came from a freebie or a discount.
  3. Check your reviews app only shows Google the reviews that are visible on the page.

When to get help: Get legal advice as well as SEO help if you’re unsure what counts under UK law.

Sources: Google: review snippet guidelinesCMS: the UK ban on fake reviews

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Selling space on your blog Against Google’s spam policies (site reputation abuse)

Sponsored posts for casino, CBD and loan sites on a shop’s blog. Google calls it site reputation abuse, and the links in them are paid links as well.

How to fix it

  1. Say no to the emails.
  2. Take down sponsored posts you’ve already published, or hide them from Google.
  3. If you do want to publish sponsored content, mark its links as sponsored.

When to get help: Usually a quick fix once you know which posts they are.

Sources: Google: site reputation abuse

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Spam in comments, reviews and Q&A Against Google’s spam policies (user-generated spam)

Links spammers post on your site through comments, reviews or questions. It’s still your site, so it’s still your problem.

How to fix it

  1. Turn on moderation, so nothing goes live until someone’s checked it.
  2. Delete the spam that’s already there.
  3. Mark links people post on your site as user-generated, so they don’t pass anything on. Your developer or your comments app can do this.

When to get help: Usually a settings change, not a project.

Sources: Google: user-generated spamGoogle: marking user links

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Copied supplier and manufacturer content Quality risk, until a whole store is copied

Using the manufacturer’s description isn’t spam on its own. A whole store of someone else’s content with nothing added is, and rewording it with AI doesn’t change that.

How to fix it

  1. Start with the products that make you money.
  2. Add what a supplier feed can’t: your own photos, a sizing note, what customers ask about it and how it compares to the one next to it.
  3. Work down the catalogue over time. You don’t need to rewrite everything at once.

When to get help: On a big catalogue, prioritising which products to rewrite first is where the time goes.

Sources: Google’s rater guidelines (PDF)

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Filter and sort pages in Google Quality risk, not a violation

Every combination of filters can become its own address. Google’s own advice is that there’s often “no good reason” to let it crawl them at all, and thousands of them waste its time on your site.

How to fix it

  1. Ask your developer to keep filter and sort pages out of Google. Google’s guide to faceted navigation explains the options.
  2. Keep the filters that match real searches, like a colour people actually look for, as proper category pages instead.
  3. Make filter combinations with no products return a not-found page rather than an empty one.

When to get help: Worth doing properly on stores with lots of filters, because blocking the wrong ones can hide pages that earn traffic.

Sources: Google: managing filter pages

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Old sites redirected into your store Quality risk, not a violation in itself

Buying an established site and redirecting it into your shop so its links come across. If the old site was neglected, you inherit its spam along with its links.

How to fix it

  1. Look at what the old site’s links actually are. If they’re spammy, take the redirect off.
  2. Only keep a site you’ve bought if it’s worth running in its own right, with its own content.
  3. Judge the result on the traffic that buys, not on how many links you’ve got.

When to get help: Get help if you’ve redirected several sites in, or you don’t know what’s pointing at the ones you have.

Sources: Google: expired domain abuse

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What this check can and can’t tell you

It can’t see your site. It works from your answers, so it’s only as good as they are, and a “not sure” is worth checking rather than guessing. It doesn’t look at your Search Console data or your links either. If your traffic has dropped around a Google spam update and the check comes back clean, the cause is probably something else: tracking, a theme change, a migration or the season.

If it does flag something and you’d like a second pair of eyes, book a call or send me your results using the form below.

Want someone to look at the whole site?

The tools give you a first sweep. If you want the full picture, and a plan to go with it, book a call and we’ll talk it through.

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