Search engine filters are designed to combat low-quality Internet resources. Filters are automatically applied to sites, and this leads to the fact that sometimes high-quality sites also appear under the filter.
Search engine filters are the implementation of penalties applied to sites for any violations. However, there are times when the site owner is sure that he did not use prohibited optimization methods and did not post non-unique content, and the site's traffic dropped for unknown reasons. In this case, you need to check the site for filters to try to understand the cause of the problems.
Checking for the most dangerous Yandex filters
The most dangerous Yandex filter is AGS, which is applied to sites containing low-quality and non-unique content. At the same time, the automatic filter AGS evaluates the site by several dozen parameters. To check the site on the AGS, it is enough to see how many pages of the site are in the index of the search engine. Typically, after applying this filter, there will be no more than 15 pages in the index, but more often than not, only one main page remains.
You can check the number of pages in your Yandex-webmaster personal account after registering an account and confirming the rights to the site. If you do not have a Yandex account, you can use the xtool service, it will not only show the number of indexed pages, but also check your site on the AGS.
No less famous among webmasters is the "redirect" filter. His cunning lies in the fact that the site's domain gets banned. And if, in the case of the AGS, at least the main page of the site remains in the index, then in the case of the redirect filter, the site is completely removed from the index of the search engine. However, this filter is applied only to sites that have java scripts of redirects to third-party resources.
To check a site for a redirect filter, enter the command “site: mysite.ru” into the Yandex search bar, enter the command without quotes, and “mysite.ru” will be replaced with the domain name of your site. As a result, you will get a list of indexed pages. And if the site is not banned, then there will be at least one page in the list.
Checking for Google filters
The Google search engine has similar filters. For example, the "Panda" filter by its action is an analogue of the AGS. The site is checked for this filter in the same way as in Yandex. You need to insert the command "site: mysite.ru" into the Google search bar. See how many pages there will be in the index, if several times less than the actual number or only one, then this is probably a Panda filter. If there are no pages in the index, then the site is banned (provided that it was previously indexed).
