How do I tell if I have been penalized?

Penalized?

[tmoney]

How do I tell if we have been penalized for anything by Google? We are new to the game. With the amount of experts in SEO on these pages is there any way to hire one of you as a consultant to help us better understand all the terminology and get us going in the right direction. We are a search engine and we are trying to increase our listings at Google? Any advice for search engines?

[troels nybo nielsen]

Welcome to WW, tmoney.

Could you describe your problem? Then the experts are very likely to answer your question right here.

While you're waiting for the experts you might try to search on the word "penalized" in the site search. You might find an answer to your problems there.

[jdMorgan]

tmoney,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Doesn't look like a penalty to me. PR5 on home page, Google crawled the search space according to the GoogleCache.

I'd say you're doing pretty well. Work on getting incoming links from other highly-ranked sites, and (for other search engines) re-address your meta-keywords from a consumer's viewpoint... The words "low sale price" and "cut rate" are conspicuously absent! There are many more - think like your customer.

Tip for Google - Don't tell them you're a search engine! :)

Jim