Has Google Penalized Telenor Pakistan?

In a first of its kind incident concerning telecom companies of Pakistan, Google has apparently penalized Telenor Pakistan by de-indexing its official website, i.e. telenor.com.pk, we have checked.

After we were tipped by multiple readers about the development some three days ago, we investigated and found out that Telenor Pakistan’s official website is not being shown in Google results, indicating that the website is penalized and not being shown for any keywords (related to Telenor Pakistan) .

It is usually very rare for a high-profile domain, especially one like telenor.com.pk, to get de-indexed by Google. But then again it’s Google, and predicting its moves isn’t as easy as one thinks.

We have checked the results and have reproduced it for our readers. You can check out the screen-grab below for the keyword search “Telenor Pakistan” on Google:

Ideally the results should have displayed “telenor.com.pk” as the top result. However, since the entire site has been de-indexed by the search giant, Google is displaying Facebook and Wikipedia pages as top results.

Not to mention, other Telenor domains, such as telenor.com and other TLDs, are not impacted by the penalty.

It is yet unclear why Telenor PK was de-indexed, but one possibility is that the domain may have violated Google TOS and was either blocked automatically through their AI algorithms or was banned manually by a Google engineer.

It must be noted that Google search is a major traffic source for internet websites. Like many others, telenor.com.pk was getting around 40% its traffic from Google (as per SimilarWeb).

All is not lost though. Once de-indexed, webmasters can fix any violations and request Google to re-consider the decision, which usually takes a few days and if the appeal is successful, the website is indexed again.

Ahsan Maykan, Director Consumer Segments and Products at Telenor Pakistan, when contacted, said that the team is aware of the issue and that they are working on resolving the problem.

Telenor said that its not a Google de-indexing related issue and is in fact an internal hiccup, that will be resolved with-in 24 hours.

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • Just google ‘Telenor’. If your location is turned on, Telenor Pakistan would pop up on the first page. However, it would not go to the landing page but some other page of Telenor Pakistan’s website.

  • Probably someone from google visited Pakistan and used Telenor Pakistan’s 3G. And de-indexed their website in anger after returning home. ?

    • But Telenor 3G is best. But just a problem with it is that I am playing no more than 144p video on Youtube but played 720 to 1080P videos on all other streaming sites. There engineer visited the site and recommend us to wait for $G,

      • I am using 4G and in all faisalabad I am unable to stream youtube more than 144p. Shitiest network ever Telenor.

          • Bhai kis area me ho mujhy b bta do me b khambaa ik laga k ghar tak signal bhej lon :o
            @ Least Peoples Colony 1 me

          • I even get 25 Mbps on Telenor but Youtube doesn’t work. And it works on all Jazz 3G/4G. zong 3G/4G and even on Ufone 3G no matters how low speedtest shows their speed.

            • yeah you are right. Koi khas masla hai Telenor CDN mein. AP btao kia hosakta hai telenor kay engineer ko bhi samajh nhi ayi maslay ki

    • Maybe I am just lucky or I live where telenor network is as perfect as you want any network to be. 3g/4g signals never dropped. Streams/download consistently.
      And in comparison to other networks regarding download speed. I almost get around 6 MB somtines in off peak times.
      But now I switched to another network which has unlimited Internet trick. Not paying single paisa. Lolz

  • Google ko telenor ki “unlocking internet potential” wali baat pasand nhe ae

  • Aamir aata gone mad!!!
    Let’s search for “site:telenor(dot)com(dot)pk” — change “(dot)” to “.”

    • First always be polite.
      Secondly if someone knows the website address of telenor (as you mentioned above) then why he/she will search on google ?

  • Not only Google but Yahoo and Bing are also not showing it. I guess it’s Telenor’s site design problem.

  • Lol, is this what you call news? How much of a khawar do you have to be to search this up and actually think people will bother.

  • کیا ہی اچھا ہوتا ہے کہ یہ ویب سائٹ بھی پاکستان کی اپنی زبان میں چلائی جاتی، اتنے سارے آرٹیکلز ہوتے ہیں لیکن سمجھنے میں پریشانی ہوتی ہے۔ اگر سابقہ ترتیب کے مطابق اس میں اردو شامل کرلی جاتی تو اچھا تھا۔۔۔۔۔


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