Is there a minus 90 penalty (like the old minus 30 penalty)?

[sim64]

I've been running a few little tests to get my own test sites dropping in the Google results for specific phrases or words by mass linking with the same Anchor text.

All the sites have dropped for the phrases targeted,

The 1st dropped from 4 to 94
The 2nd from 11 to 101
The 3rd from 65 to 155

Coincidence, or is there a minus 90 penalty like the old minus 30 penalty?

[goodroi]

Anything is possible but I'm leaning more towards coincidence.

Don't forget it is alot harder to determine accurate rankings since Google is personalizing all serps.

[affiliation]

I have noticed this also with the -50 penality, I have a domain already with a -50, it has now dropped another 90 places so a -140.

[martinacastro]

same for me... -130...

[Planet13]

What was the scope of your activities to get your test sites to drop?

Was it just link building with exact match keywords?

If so, what sort of scale were you generating links at?

And were these new sites, or ones that had some history to them?

[sim64]

@Planet13

I just pointed mass links at the page using an exact text anchor link, and an exact Alt attribute link from an image.

Text link used one phrase, Alt attribute used another phrase, the page bombed for both phrases. (same word was in both phrases though, so not a very well controlled experiment)

I initilly had around 200,000 links going to the page, with little change, pointed another 300,000 (mainly sidewides) all at the same time and it dropped within a week.

1st site is approx 18 months old and had some good rankings

2nd site is over a decade old with quite a bit of history behind it, used for early SEO competitions and has previously had a -30 penalty.

Links have now been removed again, and surprisingly the 2nd site seems to have recovered.