JerryRB - 1:51 pm on Mar 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

We too did not lose our entire site, and I have also had certain directories recover for a long period of time, one directory going on almost a full month. The problem is that other directories do not remain stable.

What made me really think they were somehow factoring in referrals is that about two weeks ago Google took a directory that had never ranked well, and all of the sudden thrust it and all of its pages into the top of the serps. This directory is the largest one on our site, comprising of nearly 500 pages. Prior to this the directory was ranking relatively normal: some pages in the top 10, others in the top 20, and others in the top 50-100.

Up until that point the 950 penalty for us was incredibly predictable, like clockwork, I knew that when I awoke on any given Monday morning, I could fine at least one or two directories of my site trashed, along with one or two rescued. When a directory gets rescued it usually remains stable for 2 weeks, some 1 week, and others 4-5 weeks, the length seemingly random.

Turning any other directory in our site on/off in the Google results is fairly predictable, but not this one. Our Google referals shot through the roof, literally increasing by more than 300% in a single day. Our traffic hit records that we had never seen even before we fell victim to this penalty.

Like I said before, it's been very customary for our site (I know other sites have a different pattern) with this penalty that Google leave results stable for at least a week, and the average 2 weeks. Google pulled this directory, along with our next highest referral producing directory 3 days later. Coincidence? Maybe, but never has this happened so quickly before, so it got me thinking.

I decided to study a data over time graph of Google referrals and manually plotted the 950 penalty events we experience on that graph. There seems to be a very clear correlation between the number of Google referrals and the problems we are experiencing. Anytime our referrals would spike, directories would be filtered out, anytime our referrals would experience a trough, directories would be filtered in. And those points where referral traffic was steady experienced the least number of 950 changes.

On another note, why not single comment from any of the Google people about this? I have been following this forum for a long time now and when so many sites fall victim to a filter that no one really understands, usually somebody from Google would chime in. So any idea why they are remaining so silent, or did I miss something?