Google issues fresh warning to websites against ‘repeated violations’

Google warned webmasters Friday against “repeated violations” of the Webmaster Guidelines, reminding websites that it’s not afraid to remove them from search results “altogether” if they don’t want to play by its rules.

The warning comes as Google continues to crack down on things like ad injectors after it received complaints from hundreds of thousands of users of its popular Chrome browser.

The company also has its hands full with an antitrust battle in Europe, and this week decided to sue an SEO company over so-called robocallers that claimed affiliation with it.

In general, Google is known to be getting more sophisticated in weeding out websites that it considers guilty of “black hat” tactics. It’s also coming down harder on once-common practices around linking, tagging, and key words in metadata.

“In order to protect the quality of our search results, we take automated and manual actions against sites that violate our [guidelines],” Google said. “However, some sites violate the [guidelines] repeatedly after successfully going through the reconsideration process.”

“Repeated violations may make a successful reconsideration process more difficult to achieve. Especially when the repeated violation is done with a clear intention to spam, further action may be taken on the site,” it added.

That said, in a Google Hangouts video Monday, Google’s webmaster trends analyst, Gary Illyes, made clear that the company isn’t being unnecessarily harsh. Remove bad links from your website, Illyes said, and you will see immediate results.

It’s not entirely clear why Google decided to issue the fresh warning today of all days, but it’s clearly something that’s been on the company’s mind more than usual lately.