Penalty for continuously optimizing?

[SlowMove]

I had about 1000 pages that were doing great with Google and were getting substantial traffic. I couldn't leave well enough alone, and I thought that I might modify them to see if they could do better. They're doing poorly now that they're indexed, so I decided to make them similar, but not identical, to what they were.

Is there such a thing as a penalty for pages that keep getting modified in a way that might be interpretted as optimizing them?

[pmac]

>Is there such a thing as a penalty for pages that keep getting modified in a way that might be interpretted as optimizing them? <

I highly doubt it, however if I have a page that is performing well, I tend to leave it alone.

[karmov]

Perfect example of the famous saying... "If it ain't broke... Don't fix it".

But no I've not heard of any such penalty. From a logical point of view it would take some significant effort on Google's part to discern between changes to a page that are cosmetic/usability/layout based and SEO based. I wouldn't worry about it. But if you make it back up there, leave it alone :)

[phantombookman]

I believe Google can tell when a site is being optimised and treats it differently.

I have had personal experience especially with KWD.
This may also explain why some older or 'original untouched' sites can get away wth 20%+ KWD and optimising a page to perhaps 6 or 7% KWD can get you 'filtered' out completely.

I avoid 'tricks' and the latest gimmicks like the plague now, even if they work today they may see you dumped next time the algo changes.
Regards
Rod