The "Have I been penalized..?" campaign is concerned with the vital need for search engines to become more transparent, particularly on search penalties often imposed accidentally on websites.

The current risk arising from obscure and unexplained search penalties can cripple any business model of online enterprises. Greater search transparency is therefore required for the online marketplace to become fairer.

It is disconcerting to see that Google appears to be taking steps in the wrong direction on transparency. As renowned search penalty expert Bob Sakayama points out in his latest blog entry entitled Occupy Google, the market-leading search engine is gradually withholding increasing amounts of data.

In particular, Bob Sakayama summarises the most important areas where Google has restricted the amount of data it makes available as follows:

- Index searches now incomplete - limited to 1,000
- Logged-in search metrics no longer available
- Link data from Webmaster Tools incomplete
- Supplemental results still exist but are no longer labeled as such

Sakayama speculates that with Google's continuing slide away from affording website owners the required levels of transparency there will come a point when the online community will start a protest akin to "Occupy Wall Street" to motivate change.

Read Bob Sakayama's analysis in full over on his blog entry at re1y.com, and join our mailing list if you have concerns about the increasing lack of transparency.