MHes - 8:26 am on Mar 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

>I didn't lose most of all of my site like some people did.

I think for any member the way forward is to find searches that still rank top and start from there, even if they are not competitive searches. The reasons they rank at all, will be inversly related to the reasons other searches don't rank for that page. Your analysis has to be extremely detailed and assume a new level of semantic ability.

There is a danger that trying potential fixes that other people mention and have had success with ( I think annej will agree with this) may produce no effect or even a negative effect. This is because the algo is concerned with phrases related to other phrases and it all becomes very specific to your site and its structure.

The other approach to finding a cure is to anticipate what google wants to find, rather than trying to understand how google works. People say "...write for humans not spiders" which is nice if it worked, but spiders will read the page first and then decide if it wants to show a human! Therefore to some degree you have to write for both. Google has employed recently a lot of 'librarian' thinking people. Ask a librarian to find a piece of information by giving them a few keywords and without understanding the topic, they should be able to nail down the information by using 'filing cabinet' navigation techniques. The more folders and sub folders, the more focused the information becomes. I think spiders work this way as well. They want a trail that consistently confirms they are on the right path, with each folder clearly qualifying and leading to the next folder. Specific phrases will increase, related phrases will decrease as you go deeper into the filing cabinet. If on that path, they find a folder that gives them illogical options.... many new 'phrases' or 'unrelated phrases', then they don't know where to go. As you go deeper you should have less folders to choose from but very specific.... we're talking good breadcrumb navigation here. So navigate your site as if you don't know the meaning of the words and want a specific piece of information. By removing possible confusion for a 'librarian' you could by default remove your 950 penalty.