Possible -60 penalty, but not certain

[johnwebm]

Two weeks ago, after adding a one line slogan to our website in the body, which included a few of our main keywords, our main search term tanked, dropping us from page 4 to page 7. No other changes had been made. I immediately took the slogan out (perhaps the wrong thing to do), but we then dropped further to page 10, where we've been ever since. Many of our other terms continue to rank well as they always have. The domain is 6 months old.

What is extremely odd is that Google webmaster tools shows our position to be the third page, and has for at least the past week. Even with the initial drop, the webmaster tools never showed us below page 4.

I've looked but have not found anything that seems similar to this situation, but perhaps I'm not searching the correct term for this. It seems like it was a -30, then -60 penalty, but I can't figure out why the webmaster tools are so out of sync after all this time.

So my question is, does this sound like a penalty, or an algo change that unfortunately coincided with my slogan addition, and why such a difference between actual serps and what shows in webmaster tools? Thanks for any insight you can give me.

[johnwebm]

Update: Tonight, our site is down to position 100 when I do a real search, yet webmaster tools shows it has moved up to position 22, the highest rank it's ever shown in the past 6 months.

[tedster]

Hello johnwebm, and welcome to the forums.

If your url has never been higher than page 4 for your main search term, it's more difficult to diagnose whether you have a penalty or just an algo change. The sudden further drop now does seem to indicate a penalty.

There's a lot that can trigger a penalty. Most of the time, with penalties of several pages, it involves Google assessing manipulative backlink practices to the site or page. I'd say pour through Google's webmaster guidelines and the threads that are linked from the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

So why the disconnect between WMT and what you see in actual search results? That's hard to say, but WMT often gives buggy reports of various kinds. Believe your eyes and your actual traffic, not a secondary reporting tool.

[johnwebm]

Thank you for the reply tedster. We have not done much with trying to develop backlinks outside of the ones occurring naturally, but I will investigate a bit more and confirm.

The site is back to page 4 today, a little over 2 weeks since this all started, so perhaps it was a short penalty of some sort. I just wish I knew for certain what caused it. WMT continues to show us at position 22, so here's hoping that is the direction it actually ends up (22 would be great for us)!

I think the odd thing is that prior to this, WMT position for our key phrases was very close to actual, including our main key phrase, and all phrases other than the main one continued to track very closely during the past 2 weeks. I guess I was hoping that might be definitive sign of a penalty - rankings tanked but WMT showing a relatively good position during that time.

You have a great resource for webmasters here. Thank you.