When a site is penalized by Google, why isn’t a message sent to the owner via Webmaster Tools telling them how/why it was penalized? Currently, site owners are left grasping in the dark trying to figure out what they did to cause a penalty.

The fact is, we do. We don’t do it for all penalties, because there are some bad guys, some spammers and some black-hats who you don’t want to clue in. But for things like hidden text, if we think your site is hacked, or vulnerable to hacking, we’ve even talked about sending messages to people who we think have old Google Analytics packages.

We do send a large number of people warnings about their site, to say ‘Hey, heads up – we had to penalize your site because of hidden text or for other reasons.

We don’t do it for every single site, and we don’t do it for every single penalty, because there are people who are trying to see how far they can get away with. Then as soon as they get caught and they know they got caught, they’ll start again on another site.

So we’ll keep trying to find out the ways to let the good guys know that they have issues, without cluing in the bad guys. But we’ll never be able to tell or probably never be able to tell every single person that they’ve been penalized. We’ll keep trying to do a good job, though.

Related posts:

1. Will I be penalized for having every file in my XML Sitemap listed with the same priority? Google Webmaster Tools gives me a warning on that, but at the same time, priority field is optional.
2. Whenever Google detects a violation of its Webmaster Guidelines, can we expect a feature to be added in Google Webmaster Central where it could help the webmasters learn what the issue was?
3. Can the “Change of Address” feature in Google Webmaster Tools be used to merge two websites (site B becomes a part of site A), or is its use limited to moving a site from one domain to another? Do you have any advice on successfully merging sites?
4. When do you reckon Rich Snippets will be made widely available? Can I suggest a tool in Google Webmaster Tools that lets you view (or preview) Rich Snippets from your site?
5. Is Google planning to create read-only “Guest Accounts” for Webmaster Tools? Many clients (particularly in heavily regulated industries e.g. banks) are very reluctant to provide access to a third party.