Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
You'd spot it while checking if your site is hit with -30 penalty (as in [webmasterworld.com...] ): search google for "mydomain.com" . Quotes are now the only way to spot -30, so be sure to use them.
If you have a newer site, the search for its domain name will generate few results and, granted, you may be shown on the first page if you are a small site. Even though you would not be beyond 30th result, it's still the -30 penalty, only you have less results to push you behind of.
Watch what happens though if you have a site that generates thousands of results on a search for its domain name:
If you are #1, you are in the clear.
If you are about #50 or so, your site is hit with the notorious -30 penalty (numbers don't make sense, I know. Read the original -30 thread).
Now you can also be #2 as well. I have two sites that contracted the decease last week. Half of Google traffic is gone. It seems not as drastic as -30 (which slashes traffic 10 times) but still a penalty. None of the two sites had any work done on them two months prior to this penalty. Some link building but nothing out of ordinary (if we can know what ordinary is with big G)
Why in the world some company that collects stats about your site and has an obscure page about your site would outrank your site for its own domain name unless it's a penalty applied to your site that nudges all your results back a notch?
It's hard to say if it's automatic or manual penalty though. I was wondering if other people experiencing this might post their observations in this thread. Maybe we can even devise what's causing this penalty? Or maybe how to get out of it perhaps?
Instincts tell me that it's just a more relevant page showing for that query, perhaps due to a higher PR. Minus 1 hardly seems worth it despite what the OP says.
Half of Google traffic is gone.
That's where I'd focus, rather than on the domain name search.
It actually goes the other way around: you realize that 1/2 of traffic is gone and then you try to find a reason. Since my main site has been hit with -30 penalty for almost a year now, this is the first thing I check for on other sites.
In fact, what else CAN you check for given that neither PR nor number of links are updated quickly enough?
I'm still pretty sure that lowered ranking for the domain name search is a sign of a penalty for linking - a loss of trust, in other words.
Would you say that -1 is a slap on a wrist, -30 is a wack on a head and -950 a death blow then? Why different grades? I though trust is a binary thing. You either have it or you don't. There must be something else to it (at least in addition to link-related trust loss)
It's a matter of trust but trust is not binary. I would deleagte responsabilities to people based on the level of trust I have in their capabilities. (Big tasks to the reliable ones, little tasks to those less reliable).
I don't even pretend to know precisely what the algo does that causes a domain to fall out of #1 for it's own search. But when that happens, it almost always coincides with other ranking problems. There's so much to check, including whether someone has done some sabotage. It's a definite sign that a site is weakened in the eyes of the big G.
The first thing I'd check is outbound links - and whether they are all what you intentionally want. The hardest server hacks to uncover sometimes create parasite links in your inner pages, rather than full blown site defacements or virus download injections. And if several people are permitted access to your server, it's not unknown that such trusted folk sometimes abuse your trust.
