Google says web sites can typically get caught in algorithm penal limbo for a number of years

Google’s John Mueller said in the hangout last Friday that in rare situations, some websites get stuck in some sort of algorithmic penalty limbo or black hole state and cannot recover because Google stopped updating that algorithm. This can cause some sites to be unable to recover for several years.

That came with 24:49 mark in the video where John said, “The other thing I’ve seen very rarely is that a site gets stuck in our systems in a strange intermediate state where, at some point, I don’t know, algorithms are checked” . the website and found it absolutely terrible and for some reason it took a long time for these parts of the algorithms to get updated. And that can sometimes take several years. “

Then John said, “I don’t know this random person raising his hand, I’ll try to ignore him.” I think he was referring to Robb Young, who brought up this topic back in 2015, where John Mueller couldn’t answer him back then. John then said to Robb, “It’s a tricky case where I can’t say much about what’s going on. This is an isolated incident and quite unique. It’s not really helpful to other webmasters. I know it’s frustrating and I wish I had something more specific to share with you. “

Now this Friday, John stated that he had seen these types of cases “all of the time” where websites just got stuck, but he said “they are extremely rare”. “The chances of any website getting onto a website are pretty slim, but if you’re struggling and you really see you’re doing a lot of things right and nothing seems to be working, reach out to us and see if something goes up our side gets stuck, “added John.

Here is the video embed where John talked about it:

Here is the transcript:

The other thing I’ve seen very seldom is that a website gets stuck in our systems in a strange intermediate state in which, I don’t know, at some point algorithms checked the website and found it to be absolutely terrible and for some reason it took a long time to update this part of the algorithms again. And sometimes it can take several years. And I don’t know, this random person raising his hand, I’ll try to ignore him.

But I mean, these are things that I’ve seen every now and then, but they’re extremely rare. So the chances of a random website falling on a website are pretty slim, but if you’re struggling and you really see you’re doing a lot of things right and nothing seems to be working, reach out to us and see if on ours Page something gets stuck.

But I would say that at least technical things solve them very quickly. I don’t know how weird things got stuck on the algorithms side. I would say that’s a lot rarer these days, but especially if something happened five or ten years ago I don’t know and your side is somehow stuck in a strange limbo then it’s always worth reaching out and looking whether there is anything strange.

This is how Glenn Gabe summed it up Twitter:

More: Also, and this is rare, but some sites can get stuck in a strange intermediate state where Gs Algos think the site is terrible. And it took a long time to update these parts of the algorithm (sometimes years). Get in touch if you think this is happening: https://t.co/bKt0CpJvFX pic.twitter.com/1Ct37ro1jd

– Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 27, 2021

Pretty scary that this can happen, even if it rarely happens.

Forum discussion at Twitter.