301 redirect and reversal - Will it attract any penalty?

[indyank]

While doing changes for Panda, I accidentally redirected a page to another URL.The content was served under the new URL for two to three weeks.I noticed this later and then reverted the redirect.The content is now served for the original URL.

This page which was earlier moved by Panda to Page 2 of SERPS is nowhere in the top 10 pages, when I search for it using its primary keyword.I could still find it in page 1 of SERPS (at a lower position than before) using its secondary keyword.This is an extension of the primary keyword.

Example:
Primary keyword - Blue widgets
Secondary keyword - Blue widgets 2010

What could be the reason?

[tedster]

It sounds to me like you're in a trust checking cycle. Google doesn't just accept 301 changes that quickly get changed again, because redirects have been a spammer's playground for many years.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

As tedster also pointed; things should be back to normal after 3-4 indexing.

[indyank]

Thanks guys.Will wait and see.But i think this is bad time to do 301 redirects, as I have a strong feeling that Panda tags urls and any changes to them are immediately caught and sandboxed.

[maximillianos]

I'm in a similar boat. In my updated to correct some bugs that got some dynamic pages indexed I accidentally caught some legit pages in the redirects. Now I reversed it but I am guessing it will take longer for G to accept.

Flip flopping is never a good thing. But what can you do. We are all human. Keep us posted and I will do the same.

[Planet13]

As tedster also pointed; things should be back to normal after 3-4 indexing.

How long will 3 or 4 indexings take?

Do you mean 4 or 4 crawls of the page(s) by googlebot?

[tedster]

It really depends on how strong your history of trust is with Google. I've seen it take 4 months for those with a "checkered past".

[kellyman]

Im at 3 months now after reversing a 301 i did by mistake, exactly 3 months on im starting to gain some of my authority back, but its been slow Google is not so lenient when it comes to mistakes.