Google's 950 Penalty - Part 11

[Marcia]

< continued from: [webmasterworld.com...] >
< related threads: -950 Quick Summary [webmasterworld.com] -- -950 Part One [webmasterworld.com] >

Just saw one 950+ and it does my heart good to see it.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /theirlinkpage.htm

No, I'm not saying that's necessarily why, but it would serve them right if it was, for playing dirty like that on a page that's supposed to have reciprocal links with people exchanging fair and square in good faith.
======================================================
Added:

And another 950+, the last site in the pack. Flash only (not even nice) with some stuff in H1 and H2 elements with one outbound link. class="visible"

<style>
.visible{
visibility:hidden;
}
</style>
=========================================================
Another way down at the bottom is an interior site page 302'd to from the homepage, and isn't at all relevant for the search term - it must have IBLs with the anchor text (not worth the time to check).

Yet another must also have anchor text IBLs (also not worth the time checking) and simply isn't near properly optimized for the phrase.

So that's four:

1. Sneaky
2. Spam
3. Sloppy webmastering
4. Substandard SEO

No mysteries in those 4, nothing cryptic or complicated like some of the other 950+ phenomenon, but it's interesting to see that there are "ordinary" reasons for sites/pages to be 950+ that simple "good practices" and easy fixes could take care of.

The question does arise, though, whether the first two are hand penalties or if somethings's been picked up algorithmically on them - in one case unnatural linking, and in the other, CSS spamming.

[edited by: Marcia at 4:46 am (utc) on July 23, 2007]

[edited by: tedster at 9:13 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2008]

[europeforvisitors]

Interesting reading, Tedster, even for those of us who haven't studied math (or thought much about it) since high school.

One question: You said, "In a given market, the pre-measured norms will be different. Because this is so, it will seem like one website can 'get away with' practices in a given market that would hurt another website very badly in another market." In the context of that statement, how broadly or narrowly would you define (or do you think Google might define) a "market"? Are you thinking of very broad categories like "widgets" and "bookings" and "real estate" or narrowly-defined niches?

[tedster]

It could be very fine-grained by market niche or website type - but I think it more likely it to be focused on a search phrase taxonomy. The search term measurements gained would be a lot easier to integrate into an overall approach to generating SERPs. However, this really does get out into a very speculative area.

My main point is that we might apparently see many different algorithms (as many people have already assumed) when there's really, essentially, just one algo that naturally adapts to varying practices. It would also give results that naturally balked at being reverse engineered because the tolerable variances would vary widely according to the search term.

[SEOPTI]

Today 50% of my sites went back into -950 box. What's going on at the Plex?

[foxtunes]

Some of my pages went -950 as well today, looks like another tweak (sigh)

[onetry]

Also my strongest site went -950 :-(

Obviously apparently without any reason.

What is your starting point in this bad situation?

[kamikaze Optimizer]

I think Google is working in the November update. I would not be to concerned at this moment. I think a lot of changes will take place this week.

[tigertom]

Ditto. I'd been wondering why my traffic had gone down in the last few days :)

Tip-toeing 'round Google's algo wastes valuable development time; it's getting to be annoying.

Amusing: I read one chap on another forum saying "there's no such thing as a -950 penalty!". To which another poster replied: "That's true, until you get hit by it".

i.e. Your site is old and has so many great backlinks you can shrug any penalty off _or_ you're not targetting popular keywords with optimised sites.

[ Just an opinion -- no, I am not a spammer -- etc. etc. ]

[potentialgeek]

I don't recall in the last several years a time when the Google situation has been so unstable. You've got too many things going on at virtually the same time. PR update, Adsense channel/income glitch, these -950 tweaks, and potentially another huge SERP update. It's very destabilizing. Shouldn't they focus on one thing at a time?

p/g

[SEOPTI]

This is definitely a -950 tweak.

[gehrlekrona]

Something IS going on. -950? For some pages but not for all.
I'd say Google just went -950 in reliability in my opinion. Too many changes at the same time, too many bad things happen at the Plex like someone said. AdSense glitches, -950 changes, spam sites still there, not rhyme or reason to SERPs.
Not sure why some pages go -950 while others don't. Some of my main keywords are still in effect while some of them are not to be found anymore. It was ok for a bout a week, eventhough I only got roughly 35% back of the original traffic, but now it down again.
Like someone said, too much time is going to keep up with GOOG, not enough time to maintain the site.

[SEOPTI]

Again a -950 hit today, what the heck are they trying to accomplish, what a nonsense, this -950 critter will never stop.

[< continued here: [webmasterworld.com...] >

[edited by: tedster at 1:05 pm (utc) on Oct. 31, 2007]