How To Identify Over-Optimization penalty

[gabriel_k]

I have a site (e.g. example.com) with several section.
One section is dedicated to "widgets" (widgets.example.com).
This section hase several sub-section e.g. "red widgets", "green widgets", "pink widgets", "blue widgets".

Section "red widgets" is optimized to key phrase "red widgets"
Section "green widgets" is optimized to key phrase "green widgets"
etc....

Each sub-section contains about 50 articles.

Only "blue widgets" and "pink widgets" sections are performing well in Google.
But the other sections are not.
Google refuses to index all articles - only 55 - 65% of the articles are in the index but they hardly appear in SERPs.

Could it be over-optimization penalty imposed to each sub-section?
Can over-optimization penalty imposed on a sub-section influence also articles in particular sub-section?

Thank you for any help.

[skweb]

It does not appear to be an overoptimization penalty. One, G never indexes all pages on any website, even with a high PR. Two, if a page does not have many links pointing to it, G drops it. If G suspects that that content is available elsewhere it drops the page. So keep building great content and hopefully they will attract links. Y and MSN might index pages that G does not and you will get traffic.

Finally, make your website for a human not for Google.

[Robert Charlton]

Section "red widgets" is optimized to key phrase "red widgets"
Section "green widgets" is optimized to key phrase "green widgets"
etc....

Each sub-section contains about 50 articles.

Are the articles substantially similar, except for the keywords, or is the content unique in each?

Only "blue widgets" and "pink widgets" sections are performing well in Google.

How competitive are the other phrases compared to these? Also, how would you compare the quality of the inbound linking to each section?

[gabriel_k]

Are the articles substantially similar, except for the keywords, or is the content unique in each?

Hmm....The articles are more or less similar because they are dealing with the same topic but the content is unique in each.

How competitive are the other phrases compared to these?

Almost the same.

Also, how would you compare the quality of the inbound linking to each section?

There is no difference in quality of the inbound links.

There are almost no differences. And that's why I wonder why some subsection are performing well while the rest is not.

Maybe some subsection got beyond a threshold and are considered by Google as over-optimized?

[Marcia]

Have there been differences in the amount of traffic to each of the sections?

[supafresh]

Increase the value of the pages you want indexed by google.