Has Google Penalised Sites Built Using Wordpress ?

[fred9989]

I wonder if it's my imagination or if Wordpress has taken a ranking hit....

Or, more accurately, if sites built on the Wordpress platform now have to work harder to prove their authority and worth?

Or could this apparent loss of position in the search results just be another consequence of Google's stated desire to show more diverse results?

Any views?

Fred

[turbocharged]

I think Google is more inclined to show brand over relevance at the moment. Also, I'm not sure what you are saying about diversity. Especially if you drill down 2, 3 and 4 pages deep, you will find rampant domain crowding on many keyword queries. Once again those benefiting from domain crowding appear to be big brands in what I have personally observed. It's a very unfriendly environment for small businesses I must say.

[JesterMagic]

I would think Google would know how to rank Wordpress sites better. With so many people using them Google would have made it a priority to understand how the CMS displays information.

I have considered several times to making the switch.

[taberstruths]

I doubt that Google is penalizing WP sites. However I am wondering if they are penalizing WP sites that are using SEO plugins.

[netmeg]

Almost all my personal sites, and many of my clients' sites use WordPress, and all of them use a very popular SEO plugin, and all but one are doing spectacularly; traffic almost doubles every year.

So... I'd have to say "no".

[klark0]

It's your imagination.

[taberstruths]

It probably is my imagination. It was just something in the back of my head. I hadn't done any real experimentation with it.

[rowtc2]

It does not make sense to penalize WP sites. But Google knows if a site is a blog/forum and so on.

I think Google treats differently some niches, for some categories they have different filters, penalties (e.g. medical, directories); but i must digg into that.

[ZydoSEO]

They could care less about what technology you're using server-side to render your pages. They don't care if it's a CMS, server-side scripting language like PHP or .NET, or pure HTML. What they care about is the final resulting HTML/XHTML that gets served up to the browser/crawler.

[Leosghost]

Totally agree ..with a slight correction..

They could not care less about what technology you're using server-side to render your pages. They don't care if it's a CMS, server-side scripting language like PHP or .NET, or pure HTML. What they care about is the final resulting HTML/XHTML that gets served up to the browser/crawler.

without which ..it makes no sense..( unless the idea is that they do care ? ..and therefore they could care less..because if one cares ..one can care less ) ..but they could not care less..because they do not care..

It is like reading "scrappers" ( double p, those who fight ) almost constantly, here and elsewhere..when it should be "scrapers" ( single p, those who scrape ) ..it is very important ..otherwise non English speakers and readers ( WebmasterWorld has many ) will copy such mistakes..

[bhartzer]

It may be blogs in general that Google's "penalizing". It's more difficult to get a blog post to "rank well" or even get it to get indexed quickly.

If Google makes it more difficult to get blog posts indexed by requiring external links to posts or something like that, they may be able to get rid of a lot of the "splogs" out there.

[fred9989]

I'll take that as a "no" then!
LOL