Wilburforce - 8:16 pm on Aug 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

This might be due to other factors in the algorithm trying to overcome the effects of Penguin.

My own site has been gradually floating upwards - now on page 4 - since Penguin kicked it from the top of page 1 to page 9 and below for the main money term. I suspect Penguin has acted against natural algorithm features, which are now gradually undoing some of the damage.

I don't actually want a Penguin refresh until Google recognises that all the backlinks that were probably a primary cause have gone. They were removed on 7 May, but WMT still reports 341 of them.

The penalty I am experiencing doesn't extend to longer phrases that include the penalty term (I am down on main money term, but not on main money local city, or main money with added facilities).

As a related aside, I switched to using Bing for my own searches in May (partly out of pique), and on short-phrase searches they seem better, but I sometimes find their results on longer phrases frustrating, and when I have reverted to Google for these the results have been consistently OK.