Possible Penalty?

[JimM]

I recently hired an SEO to work on my site and he found something interesting that he thinks might be a problem. I have a site with a PR6 and over 1220 backlinks with the keyword appropriate anchor text, but still no where to be found in the serps for G or Y. When the seo person searched for my name he found another URL which I had forwarded through Network Solutions some time ago. That URL shows identical results for links, allinanchor, and such. Are the search engines thinking that this old URL is a mirror site or something else like that? Could this cause a penalty? Any feedback on this is appreciated!
FYI, I have taken the forward off and changed the old URL to under constrution.

[Marcia]

If it returned a 200 or a 302 redirect there could have been confusion. I wouldn't exactly call it a penalty in that case, I've seen a site come back after changing from an erroneous 302. Google's pretty good with that - not so Yahoo/Ink so far from what, I've seen if they catch what seems to be a duplicate. How are you doing there?

You can develop the other domain separately with unique content, or put it on hosting and redirect it using a 301 permanent redirect.

>>keyword appropriate anchor text

You might want to vary it a bit if it's all identical. With a lot of inbound links and internal linking all the same, it's real easy to fall into over-kill.

[cabbie]

If that is the problem it should quickly correct itself in google once you take the forwarding off but I doubt that that is your problem.I do that all the time cos I am too lazy to find out how do to a 301 redirect.
There are many reasons I can think of why you may not show up in G or Y despite having good links and high pr.A couple of them being;
On page factors
e.g. hidden text,overuse of keywords,duplicate content,little text or no text on page
Link factors:
links are part of a link farm,links are all from one place, too much unnatural anchor text.
Similar sites:
i.e. If you already have a site in the serps chasing the same niche and google can detect that then that may prevent your site appearing.

[Marcia]

Google's very fast to pick up corrections and straighten things out.

>>too much unnatural anchor text.

That's worth repeating 3X. It may look like some sites that rank well are way up top for allinanchor:, but that doesn't mean they don't also have *different* anchor text.

[JimM]

Hey Folks, Thanks for the quick replies.
When you speak of unnatural anchor text...Do you have any examples that I might learn from? Most (95%) of my incoming links have *City* Real Estate for the anchor text. This seems natural to me, but then again that's why I am here...to learn from the experts.
Thanks again, Jim

[Marcia]

We can't show specifics or examples per the TOS Jim, but if you search for florida update real estate webmasterworld you'll find some lengthy discussions on the topic. Things have changed some since back then, but it's a good starting point.

[JimM]

Update on my post about Penalty? April 17th

I sent an email to Google explaining the history (I also told them the forward had been removed) and asked them if there was a penalty, they responded by saying there was no penalty on my site and that I was in their index.

Shortly therafter, I found my site on the second page for many of my competitive keywords and even on the first for some of the lesser ones.

I also sent the same email to Yahoo and they responded by saying that there was an editorial judgement against my site. No specifics were given, just referred to their content guidlines.

They did thank me for the history about the url forwarding and the other corrections that had been made and said my site would be submitted for re-inclusion.

We'll see what happens.

I have to think that the problem was related to the forwarding url's.

Regardless of what happens, I am impressed by the quick response by both Google & Yahoo