Sorry, I thought i was stuck in a sandbox, but hey, I am in 951 , all the pages of the site are stuck there. Now i wanna know more about it
Okay, listen up... 1) The "950 penalty" is only the slang term that people are using to describe this penalty. It's actually the "end of the results" penalty because that's where your page winds-up --usually somewhere between 900-1000. On searches where there are only 800 results, a penalized page will wind up between 700-800. Hence it's actually a "end of the results," not "950" penalty. (950 is just easier to type, and that's why it's used) 2) The 950 penalty seems to be associated with specific competitive terms or phrases. (very important=>) In order to be hit with a 950 penalty you must FIRST have previously ranked very high for that competitive term or phrase (often #1). Just because a crappy page is showing up on the last page of the serps DOES NOT mean it's hit with the 950 penalty --it just means it's a crappy page that deserves to be there. The most common senerio for this penalty is that a page on an EXCELLENT site ranks #1 for YEARS for a competitive term/phrase, then OVER NIGHT winds-up on the last page of the serps for no apparent reason. The page contains no spam, no bought links, no scraped content, no splog links, no keyword stuffing, and no visible reason for the penalty whatsoever. THAT is the 950 penalty. 3) Keeping #2 above in mind, some people say the 950 penalty "doesn't exist." That's usually because they've never ranked well for a competitive term to begin with, so there is no way they WOULD be hit with a 950 penalty. 4) This penalty can hit a single page, a single directory, or all the way up to (in some cases) most of a site's pages. 5) Some sites/pages recover in one week; some never recover. Many sites report cycling in and out of this penalty for as long as a year. 6) Many people feel it's simply a case of Google mis-identifing a page as spam for some unknown reason, but no one knows what causes it or how to avoid/remove it.
As palms said, it's more of a "last page" penalty and not necessarily a strict 950 position drop. Among the factors that may warrant such a include duplicate content, linking to bad neighborhoods and over optimization for specific keywords. Unfortunately, once you are in you are in for quite a long time. As far as I have seen, there's no proven way out. Just hard work, patience and luck.
clientid32875, from what I have seen PR plays no role in the penalty. High PR, low PR sites can get hit just the same.
While every site is different, this penalty most often hits sites with (1) No bad neighborhood links, (2) Few or no recips, and even (3) No outbound links at all. The main problem with this penalty is that there is NO APPARENT REASON FOR IT. Remember, these pages/sites ranked highly for YEARS before they were hit. It hits authority sites with excellent content and years of naturally built-up inbound links. True. Plus, pages/sites hit with this penalty rarely lose their PR. The only thing that changes is that they go to the end of the serps for terms/phrases they once ranked highly for. HOWEVER, these same pages can sometimes rank well (#1) for slightly modified phrases. i.e.... #950 for "widgets cityname" #1 for "widgets in cityname" The addition of a single simple word like "in," "on," etc. seems to bypass the penalty. Which leads to the obvious question of, "Why is this page penalized in the first place?" What's also very interesting is that they are almost never completely DROPPED out of the serps. They usually go to the end of the serps. Additionally, pages hit with this penalty show a strange behavior with respect to scraper sites. Since these sites ranked highly for such a long period of time, they have been scraped to death. When you do a search for an exact snippet of text (like you were searching for people who scraped your content), the penalized page will rank below ALL scraper pages that stole the content. As a matter of fact, the penalized page is usually hidden behind the "Repeat search with..." function link. Most people never notice this penalty until THEIR page/site gets hit. Why not? Because when your competitor who previously ranked #1 disappears, how often do you click thru 95 pages of serps to find out exactly where he now ranks? Never, because all you care about is that he's gone and out of your way. Sad, but very often true.
palms, good points. i will also add that there really is no one infraction that leads to this penalty. it seems it can be any number of things, or nothing at all. and that's what makes this penalty so frustrating. and unfortunately for some legit sites that do get hit it may just be a case of collateral damage/bad luck. my best guess is that's over optimization plays a big role in this. so if you do suddenly find yourself at the bottom of the SERPs and your site is heavily SEO'd, try deoptimizing your site (and cross your fingers). heck, if you are at the bottom what do you have to lose?
One of my sites just got the 30 penalty. I was ranking number 1 and 2 for some phrases and now I'm at the bottom of the 3rd page. Probably because it's kind of MFA page with some affiliate links.
Yeah this penalty is found since a year and a half and it's because of over on page optimization or linking to bad websites, fix the problem and submit a re inclusion request and if the problem is solved your website will recover quickly.