A penalized web site is much less likely to show up in a SERP, and in some cases it may not appear at all.This article discusses the following:
1-The Google “Sandbox Effect”
Many search engine optimization experts hypothesize that there is a virtual “purgatory” that all newly launched sites must pass through in order to rank well in Google. In fact,
many new sites seem to pass
through this stage, and many find that the period is remarkably close to six months. Google may not explicitly have a “sandbox,” the effect itself is real. For this reason it is termed an “effect,” and not a “penalty.” It may be the collective side effect of several algorithms —
not an explicit “sandbox algorithm.” Some sites seem to be exceptions to the rule, especially those that acquire links from several authority sites early on. A few links from cnn.com and other prominent web
sites, for example, may exempt a web site from the sandbox effect.Some hypothesize that Yahoo! has a similar algorithmic factor, but that it is less severe and pronounced.MSN Search does not appear to have anything similar implemented.
2-The Expired Domain Penalty
Using a previously expired domain to launch a new web site used to evade this dreaded “sandbox effect.” This was likely because Google was unaware that the site was new. Google put a stop to this
loophole a while ago, and now it seems to be quite the opposite situation at times.An expired domain name may now be subject to a temporary penalty. This is important, because it implies
an additional delay before a site begins to rank well. In some cases Google will even refuse to index the pages at all during that period, leaving a web site vulnerable to content theft.
It is also likely that Google devalues any links that are acquired before the re-registration of the domain.At the time of writing, other search engines do not appear to penalize previously expired domains.
3-Duplicate Content Penalty
Search engines attempt to avoid indexing multiple copies of the same content—duplicate content. Many search engine optimization experts hypothesize that not only does a search engine not index such pages,
but it also penalizes a site for having the duplicated content.This is a subject of much debate, but in any case, having duplicate content will not improve the rankings of a site in any of the major search engines. Therefore, duplicate content should be avoided, and this book
devotes an entire chapter to the subject.
4-The Google Supplemental Index
This is not strictly a penalty in and of itself, but it may be the result of one. Google stores its crawled search data in two indexes: the primary index and the supplemental index. The supplemental index
stores pages that are less important to Google for whatever reason. Results from the supplemental index typically appear at the end of the results for a Google query,and the results are marked as supplemental results.
Factors that lead to inclusion of that link in the supplemental index rather than the primary index are the lack of significant unique content or a lack of inbound links to the said content. It may also be as a result of explicit penalization.
