Jez123 - 9:21 am on Nov 2, 2012 (gmt 0)

I think most of us whiners are at a loss, both financially and logically about what Google is doing

Well said. I for one am in real danger of losing my house and business (the 2 are tied together to some extent) due to Penguin.

The tension in regards to google and it's motives is really just what Matt Cutts has been marinating for some time now; the notion that a person who gets up in the morning and wants to pay their bills, feed their family, be productive in their chosen endeavor is somehow "bad" for trying to "manipulate" a search algorithm. Some here are all too comfortable in adding to that particularly heinous meme when a member has a ranking issue... Maybe webmasterworld members could take a kinder tone towards other webmasters instead of adapting the us vs. them mentality fostered by industry mouthpieces.

The infuriating thing with google is that people look at the sites who ARE doing well and emulate what they have done. Copy methods, backlinks etc and get penalised for that all the while, the site that they emulated sits pretty and does not get touched.

Google are not consistent and it forces people to bend the rules (and justify bending them due to the amount of sites that slip the net thinking google must be OK with this) to get their new, niceley made, decent content, better than the rest, sites into the field of vision.

Who wouldn't be frustrated? This is exactly what (I assume) has happened to me. Penguin has killed me but left the REAL spam behind. Not just content with leaving it behind, it now loves and rewards it even more. Level playing field? I think not.
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[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:27 am (utc) on Nov 2, 2012]