realmaverick - 8:47 pm on Oct 25, 2011 (gmt 0)

I kid you not. I started a new affiliate website website several months ago and quickly gained a number 1 position for my target keywords. It then went from 1 to around 600-700 for my targeted keywords.

It stayed this way for 3 months, so I submitted a reconsideration request to Google. They emailed me back and informed me that there was no manual penalty and that it must have been algorithmic.

I then did a search for my target keywords, and all of my number 1 ranks were back. I'd only checked several hours before and they were all hovering around 600+.

I'm also certain that they visited my website. It's a website targeting UK traffic and minutes before the email, there was a visit from California. The first US visit in the lifetime of the website.

So the question is, why did they tell me there was no manual penalty and then my ranks suddenly re-appeared? I'm pretty sure they didn't update the algorithm for me :D