cloned pages have caused drop in google listings

minus 30 problems?

[masterwebman]

A number of months back a client, who is a sales rep for another company, requested I include information exactly as it appeared on the company's site. I warned her that it could hurt her search position on Google. Of course she didn't believe me and insisted I do it. So, the client always being right, I added the information. (An exact clone of pages from the other site).

A couple of days aqo she called me, livid that her site was not coming up on searches for her main line of products which is different from the added line of products. I checked and she has dropped from the bottom of page 1 to page 7 in Google search for her keywords. However, a search for the cloned product puts her on page 1 for that product name. Her main product, is in a very competitive area and the competition is very well optimized, but an examination of their pages shows they're not any better optimized than her site is.

I suspect that she dropped to page 7 for the main product due to the minus 30 filter, but she remains high on page one for the cloned products? Any clue here? Of course the main product is her main business. Also, if I delete or change the cloned pages to original text, how do I get her back to where she was?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:18 pm (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]
[edit reason] fixed text formatting [/edit]

[nippi]

this is not the +30 filter, or the whole site would be at least +30.

This is just bad seo penalty by the sound of it, + 30 penalty is breach of google trust.