BeeDeeDubbleU - 8:51 am on Oct 30, 2006 (gmt 0)

Google penalises sites that it sees as being over optimised. strongly held opinion with data to back this up below ;)

I believe that Google does not like new sites that appear to be over optimised with KWs in the domain name, title, description, H1, H2, H3 and anchor text. I also believe that the data below backs this up.

Two years ago I launched three sites within about four weeks of each other. The very same SEO techniques were used in all of them. One of them was commercial and heavily optimised for the KWs in the domain name www.mauve-widgets.co.uk. Another, non-commercial, was also heavily optimised for a poet's name, www.johndoe.org.uk. The third, also non commercial and heavily optimised, was for a private sports club, which used the domain name, www.mytownmysportclub.co.uk.

All three sites were quickly indexed by Google. All of them were launched with only a couple of IBLs. The third mentioned site started ranking first although it is a minority sport and did not get much traffic it has climbed steadily ever since. The second started ranking a month or two later but it did not get a high position. It has however steadily climbed the rankings ever since and is now top five for the poet's name.

The first site, www.mauve-widgets.co.uk, did not see any significant Google traffic for about 15 months. It then started attracting traffic for some of the lesser terms on the site and it has stayed there ever since. It is still off the radar for the main KWs (those in the domain name). It has reasonable content and it genuinely offers something for nothing (a free service for those looking for mauve widgets). To me this is strong indicator that some sort of OOP is in play.

This morning for the purpose of this exercise I ran a check and for the term mauve widgets the site is at position 601 in Google.com and 602 in Google.co.uk. On a search for "mauve widgets" (in quotes) the site is not listed on either and after two years I doubt that it ever will be. This to me is proof that Google has penalised my site for the main KWs.