test pages for Google penalty

[RoySpencer]

Is there a test I can perform to determine if a penalty exists against my pages/site?

As background, we switched to a new domain name months ago, made the mistake of having multiple names pointed (forwarded) to the same site, and now have 301 redirects in place, and are finally getting page rank back. But our pages still remain lost in the depths of the SERPS....most having fallen from the top ten to not-in-the-top-1,000.

Can I change one page slightly, make a new version of it with a new name, and see how it fares? Is there another experiment I can try? Any advice would be appreciated.

[keywordguru]

Well if your SERP' are nowhere to be found, I would say that a small change and close watch is a good thing. I usually will watch my positioning closely. If I see something is constantly falling and is not just dancing up and back down, I will sometimes try to make a minor change. If I see it helps I will keep it, and if I see things getting worse I will switch it back to the old. It is all a game of guessing so your guess is as good as anyone else's in this crazy google game we play.

There is no true way to find out if you are banned or not, but what is usually suggested is...If you are listed anywhere in the directory, then you are usually not banned. Some are sandboxed on that theory, but not many are banned these days for simple stuff like this.

Just be sure to change it enough so you are not pinging off any duplicate content filters.

Before any of this, let me ask, about when did your site loose your placement for keywords? was it at the time of a big update like the Florida one? Also know that PR had not been updated for over 3 months. Give some more details.
KG

[steve40]

I hate to tell you this , but suspect if keywords accross the board lost in august changes tweaking pages will not help as suspect maybe a sitewide penalty

take a guess why penalty in place and fix problem first , then hope that next new filter checking picks up your changes and takes away penalty

steve

[RoySpencer]

OK, thanks for the advice. No, we went through Florida just fine. I'm pretty sure the penalty was from having multiple names points to the same IP address. I'm just surprised to get PR back before the SERPs positions change...I thought SERPs change more frequently than PR. I guess we'll just have to wait.

[steve128]

There is no way no how you can tell if your site is penalised.(unless you are privy to the g alogo)
Assumming no black hat stuff, you are just randomized, along with all others.

Lets try and stay on-board here, competetive "money" keywords are random results, pleeeaaase no bs take a look at at "real competetive searches" no rhyme no reason why a site page 1 should beat a site page 4 for the same "keyword". jeez it is blatent, the results are randomized.
Now if yo are in a "niche industry" you should have no probs ranking ok, providing you stick to basics.