helleborine - 9:27 pm on May 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

I'm sure they can make an exception for a couple of directories they feel are "worthy" - it shouldn't be difficult to let a couple escape the penalty.

This being said, small directory entries continue to outrank me - by miles - for my business name.

My old index page was loaded with 450 internal links, and quite a bit of KW-rich text, only the text came below the internal links. I might have been penalized, as you speculate, for a suspicious link/text ratio.

I have fixed this in my new index. I've dropped the internal links, and still increased the amount of text. I made these changes early in Bourbon, that is, last Saturday.

I'll of course never know what might have happened had I not made these changes (no control group unless Chopin volunteers), but I'll be sure to inform everyone if there are changes in the situation.

Say, I'm specifying "no archives" because my Ratfink competitor was directly stealing my contents despite banning him in htaccess. Is there a way to know if Google has my new index page or the old one in its database?