mhansen - 10:43 pm on Apr 2, 2012 (gmt 0)

Looking at a few of the pages where we are seeing a drop in direct long tail traffic from Google, it's obvious to me that the internal anchor text has been discounted, as well as some kind of optimization de-ranking. (or a combination of both)

Formerly top ranked (1-3 serp rank, longtail) internal pages such as [brand widget model] that were linked only internally are no longer ranking in the top 20. The main homepage however, still ranks in the top 5 for the longtail. Since the website homepage still ranks in the top 5, it cannot be an "authority not passing" type issue to me.

SERP's in our world are dominated by made for adsense domains and sites for the past few days. Lets not kid ourselves, someone knows these dial tweaks are resulting in higher income in the plex. I predict another record earnings call next week from Google.