Penguin Punished URL returned to first page over the weekend

[neildt]

During this weekend, I noticed that a page we thought had been hit by Penguin has returned for the keyword phrase we were targeting back on page 1 of the SERPS.

Now it's either just a coincidence that it has returned, or it is due to the changes we made throughout our site for this page based on why we were hit by Penguin.

Anyone else see any changes over the weekend like this ?

[neildt]

Yes links from the same domain (internal links)

[driansmith]

Yes actually that, the number of internal links going to the same page was reduced from about 30 links to just 3.


Surely that's going to damage how your human visitors find your stuff isn't it? So much for write pages for people not for SE's! :)
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Not convinced of anything substantial taking place here. Also, we have no idea what the internal linking text changes actually were?

[Martin Ice Web]

The reason I ask is because over the past month or so I have checked rankings only to find my site fully restored (seemingly) but not a single visitor. Google seems to be showing me on occasion what it thinks I want to see (my site ranking well), even though I keep a clear cache, history, stay logged out of GWT, and have personalization turned off. It is a very odd phenomenon that someone else may be able to explain better. I am not saying that you are seeing this, but I know I have -- and it's very frustrating.

@crobb,

I see this too and figured out that poeple in other locations from germany ( i am located in the west ) get different serps. So a have a search string from one visitor where the position of my page is 7 and when I look at the same query it is on 1. I can only assume that localization is working although the other way.
Let me explain what I mean:
If google knows my website and knows my "business location" from impress/WMT or elsewhere, they now can balancing by IP how far away is my business from the dial in point?! and rank more located website in fornt of mine.

That would explain why you are on #1 and donīt get traffic? Because most poeple from outsite our town would like to find something in your town not the other way. If it is like this the localization runs the wrong way.