lethal0r - 5:36 pm on Oct 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

I have had 4 EMD websites hit with the -950 "somewhere really low in the SERPS" penalty.

I have had 1 non-EMD website hit with the -950 for its main terms, but survive for a few others.

I have had 1 EMD website survive unscathed.

after looking at my own sites at length I believe this is an over-optimization penalty which is keyword-based. i feel pretty certain on that, I dont think most people have been hit with an EMD penalty.

im not sure on whether the penalty is for on-page over-optimization, or link based. perhaps it is both. either would apply to my punished sites, where I have obviously targetted certain searches zealously, without doing anything approaching black hat. your typical site owner would not do this (or, at least google's ideal site owner wouldn't). I have a strong suspicion there is an issue with too many footer links and links not in sentences e.g. forum sigs.

the site that survived is 6 months old, has my best content and has some pretty decent backlinks. so either there is a few months grace period with regards the new penalty, or I have done something right here.

I feel the solution is within google's regularly repeated mantra "pretend google doesn't exist".