Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have a number of websites, all with unique content. On February 13th, I took the .css file for each of these sites and did three things:
- I justified the text in the body.
- I added font-weight: bold to the links.
- I changed the color on some of the links when they're hovered over.
This was done to make the links stand out more from the text and to just make the sites easier to read. Starting on February 16th and ending on the 17th, every one of those sites with the exception of one took a major dive in Google, almost as though it was hit by some sort of penalty. They still appear in the index and everything, but they've nosedived ranking wise. The only thing I did to every site was that little bit of css editing - they were mostly left alone otherwise and definitely weren't edited in the same manner from site to site beyond that. It's way too much of a coincidence in timing for me to think that the February 13th editing couldn't have had something to do with this because nothing else makes any sense.
The only thing I can think of is Google didn't like the links being bolded, because I can't see why it would care about the text being justified and I only changed the color on hovered links on a few of the sites. Has anyone ever heard of Google slapping penalties on people for bolding links in CSS? Cuz that sounds kind of absurd, but it's the only likely suspect that I can find.
I've removed the February 13th edits on half of the sites. Hoping to see some reaction within the next few days.
