symptoms

Why has my website been penalised

[glitterball]

This might not be the best time to post this as there is (possibly) still an update going on.

My site 'bluewidget.com' comes up nowhere for 'blue widget'.
However results #2 and #3 both link to me. In fact the only outbound links on these pages go to 'bluewidget.com'.
Since I am getting traffic from both of these sites, I have not been in a hurry to ask for these links to be removed.

Has anyone else had a similar experience and had their rankings improve when the links were removed?

BTW I am #1 for the 'blue widget -a' search.

[Marcia]

Are you just not ranking or did you have a decent ranking and drop out?

For the sites linking to you, are they linking out to you using the keywords in the anchor text? And if so, does the phrase appear anywhere else in the title or on the page? Or elsewhere on other pages of their sites?

[glitterball]

One of the sites linking to me uses 'blue widget' as the anchor text (the name of my website is 'blue widget'). The other site links to me via a graphic, which includes (amongst other words) the text 'blue widget' in the alt text.
Both of these pages and my own have the phrase 'blue widget' in the title.

I did have a fairly decent ranking before Florida.

[MyWifeSays]

What are the PR's of the ranked pages and root page? What about links to the sites? How many for you and them? What is the quality like of the links, are any from authority sites such as DMOZ or other directories?

[seomike2003]

It's been 3 days chill out. If you just let your site alone it will come back! Algo's settle down. If your site was relavent once then it still is.

[glitterball]

The PR of the bluewidget.com homepage is 5.

The first linking page (#2 in SERPS) is a PR3 (with a homepage of PR6). This is a very big 'authority site', but it doesn't have any real content.
The second linking page (#3 in SERPS) is a PR5 (the homepage on this site is also a PR6. Again an authority site.

Nearly all of the bluewidget.com backlinks are from 1 site (I think that I have just answered my own question....)

[gatekeeper]

Marcia..
you've got mail.

[dirkz]

> Has anyone else had a similar experience and had their rankings improve when the links were removed?

Are the links visible for Bots?

Where is your page ranked at now?

Otoh, what makes you think that all you need is two links (with the current algo)?

My feeling is that Google is always experimenting with the anchor text know and the PR knob. They turn them up and down.

[glitterball]

I have more than 2 links, I was just referring to the linking sites that are coming up #2 and #3 for 'blue widget'.

Most of my pages are indexed.
I cannot find my site for the term 'blue widget' (not in first 20 pages).