johnhh - 11:59 pm on May 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

This is interesting - as it could be a phrase based "over-optimization" penalty that could bring problems when writing good content.

For example, previously we had , what I thought was a major -950 problem, but in fact the pages were appearing in, often, top 10 SERP places but not for the theme of the site.

For example if the theme of a page was "blue widgets technical specification sheets" we were finding that the pages were OK for the SUBJECT "blue widgets" - in fact very good positions - but not for the targeted THEME "blue widgets technical specification" within the SUBJECT "blue widgets".

As it is pretty difficult to write an article on "technical specification" without mentioning these words - individually or together a number of times it would appear that maybe the mere mentioning of these words or related words, perhaps instructions/construction/etc/etc, a few times produces a potential -950 page.

Specific examples are easier to explain but UTC's etc

As we were doing site redesigns at the same time we also noticed that even redesigning made no difference to "strong" pages - once at positions 1 to 8 always number one to eight - so probably these pages are supported by quality IBL's. Hence my comment above about "potential -950 pages"

Pages that were borderline ( SERP positions 10-20'ish )dropped out , often to -950. Attempting to reinforce the "theme" on these pages by use of Title/Descriptions didn't seem to make any difference.

We also tried writing vague Description/Titles etc to these pages avoiding the phrase "technical specifiaction" - no joy there as well.

The above is the result of 3 months or so of work on this on and off, but may well explain anniej's experience of what happens if you remove the page content.

To make matters slightly worse the whole site is about "widgets technical specifications" not the blue/pink/yellow widgets themselves.

And I'm terribly sorry Mr Google but if you want me to rewrite hundreds of pages of content.......

Disclaimer - all sites are different so I report the above as is - no warrenty!

[edited for clarity]