Penalty for changing to exact phrase match in home page title?

[freejung]

So... I decided to change my homepage title the other day. My homepage title has not changed in years, and I've been #1 for my primary keyphrase for years.

Recently, however, I made it to page 2 for a much higher-traffic, more generic keyphrase. Since the Mayday update, I noticed I was popping in and out of the second page spot periodically -- sometimes I'd be on page 2, sometimes not in the top 100.

So I decided to try changing my title to include an exact phrase match for this new phrase, (it didn't before, it's a two-word phrase and I had both words, but with another word in between). I figured maybe that would solidify my position, maybe even move me up to page 1.

Result? Instantly removed completely from that SERP. A subpage now appears on page 9. My other rankings have not changed at all.

Does that sound like an over-optimization penalty? It's not like I'm stuffing the phrase. I have one exact match in title, and one exact match in the body text, and lots of relevant related phrases all over my site.

Has this sort of thing always happened? Could it be a clue to the new algo change?

[freejung]

Never mind, I think I figured it out. It has to do with safe search. Apparently in order to get to page 1 for this particular SERP, they're going to have to frisk me for p#$%.

That's cool, as soon as they review the site, I'll pass inspection and then we'll see what happens.

[aristotle]

Never mind, I think I figured it out. It has to do with safe search. Apparently in order to get to page 1 for this particular SERP, they're going to have to frisk me for p#$%.

Do you mean a check for malware? Also, is this a crawler software check, or a manual review by a real person? Also, does Google allow you to get to page 2 without a check, but not to page 1?

[freejung]

I have no idea, aristotle. All I know is that whether or not I appear in this SERP depends on safe search settings. The rest is just guesswork, I don't know how Google audits sites for the purposes of safe search, but I assume that determining the nature of images requires manual review. As a judge once put it, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

Given the nature of my site, it is likely that it was flagged as potentially having, um... potentially objectionable material for mature audiences. It doesn't, but I can see why an automated system might think it needs to be checked. The search term in question is closely related to terms that might be used to search for such content.