tedster - 2:38 am on Oct 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

This BS all started when Google hired that batch of interns or whatever they called them bout 2 years ago to review sites manually.

That goes back to August 2003 [webmasterworld.com]. [see also Google's Secret Evaluation Lab [webmasterworld.com]] -- and the minus-thirty penalty was with us back in 2001. Not to say this new version of the minus-thirty couldn't be just as you suspect, because it certainly could be.

From my reading of Google's editorial opinion patent [webmasterworld.com] I would expect its results to be a lot less heavy handed than a clunky -30 effect. No, I can't prove that, but a dumb, flatfooted -30 just doesn't feel worth patenting. And indeed, the patent does describe a much more sophisticated effect.

I've seen urls get a -30 and then seen that penalty removed in stages over several weeks after some condition was fixed. It sure looked automated to me. No, I can't prove that, except to say that Matt Cutts talked about wanting to do some automated penalties with automated removal quite a while ago. And in general, Google always looks to automate wherever they can because "it scales".

But whether it is a hand applied or automated penalty, the main thing is to fix the condition that Google doesn't want to see in a first page result. One big factor the editorial crew looked for was many pages of mostly affiliate stuff with no "value added" for the visitor. Directory clones was another. Of course, by now almost any negative quality factors at all might be the magic slipper. Just pretend your domain is Cinderella and see what fits your footprint. You've looked and decided that anchor text doesn't fit in your case -- but something does.

[edited by: tedster at 3:35 am (utc) on Oct. 14, 2006]