Does The Google -950 Penalty Exist?

I have a site that I believe is suffering from what some people call the G -950 penalty. Basically, I am almost fully indexed, pages crawled by G bots constantly, and even in the serps. My problem is that all of my ltkw's have dropped from very good rankings to the very end of the serps. I wrote a little post about it HERE if you want to read the full story.

My site can no longer be found for virtually anything. All the serps went away in a few minutes, as if someone at Google just flicked an off switch on it. There was no slow decline in ranks. It was literally instantaneous.

I have read a bit about a Google -950 penalty. This sounds a lot like what I am experiencing. Can anyone tell me if the -950 penalty really exists, and what I can do about it?

Thank you very much.

 

Well, I never heard about -950 penalty anyway if your sites dropping ranking then it means you done something wrong which google doesn't like it. your solution is 1st check your complete site and then start work on them regularly and It's true It'll takes time but it'll come back again. If your sites dropping between 6 to 10 page then it's sure google take penalty on them.

 

Search the -950 penalty and you will find quite a bit about it.

No, I did nothing wrong with this site. It is 100% whitehat. No spam links. No cloaking. Nothing that violates any standards whatsoever.

I understand the desire to think that G only penalizes "bad" webmasters, but unfortunately that just isn't true. I wish it was because this thread would have never been started.

 

Silly. you sent that letter to Google? They won't even read it, believe me. Even if you reported a paid link to Google, nothing will happen. I think i have reported around 20 of my competitors who CLEARLY have bought links but they still get good ranks.

 

Friend, you are right, there is/was many discussion running in webmasterworld , some articles and other forums for how to avoid -30 and -950 penalties from Google.

I've got some clarification in my SEO Documents for What Should we do to Avoid -950 penalties.

There are different solutions given by many webmasters and search engine optimization experts across multiple forums but primarily all of the solutions provided boils down to the following:

1)Do not stuff keywords in the page title, description, alt tags and in the content.
2)Do not link out to link farms and sites engaged in link manipulation practices.
3) Be consistent in building links and vary your link anchors as much as possible.
4)Avoid cloaking and doorway pages.
5) Build your website keeping the users in mind instead of the search engines.


Thanks
John

 

Yes, I submitted the re-inclusion request.

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, I have followed all of these suggestions to the tee and I am still where I am at.

But good list of w/h practices to share.

 

Let me answer your question with a question: does Sasquatch exist?

 

so, the answer is yes, the -950 penalty is real, like sasquatch?

 

Very cute. You were trying to be cute, right?

 

I personally feel the 950 penalty is as real as that picture there.

 

Mind sharing why?

 

The HELL?

When was your site launched? How old are the pages? Do you have QUALITY RELEVANT links pointing back to your pages? Are those incoming links placed naturally (and by naturally I don't mean this garbage - which I actually saw today: <h1><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com">Your Keyword Rich Anchor Text</a></h1>)? Do you have a strong internal linking structure set up?

Did you OPTIMIZE the content for both your readers and the search engines? (Hint: doing the former properly often results in the latter being done as well, especially when written by an experienced copywriter.)

And no, I didn't look at your site. I have far too many tabs open right now and I'm also responding to some prospective clients.

 

Yes the -950 penalty exists. It is an automatic penalty that can be resolved without a reconsideration request. Basically it's an over optimization penalty. Most of the people I know that have had it solved the problem by cleaning up the keywords in their internal linking and on their pages.

Don't have a bunch of links on one (or every) page repeat the same word over and over again. I.e. "Red Widgets", "Blue Widgets", "Green Widgets", etc. If the title, description, and h1 tags on the landing pages all have the exact same text you are in danger of the -950 penalty.

Find a way to remove the repeated words in link text from the same page and that often fixes the problem.

 

Very useful reply and information. Let me look at my site again and see if any of that would apply. Thank you very much.

 

Very good thread I really learn new think here thanks to all of you guys. Can anyone suggest any article where I can completely learn about -950 penalty?

 

If someone can PROVE IT EXISTS beyond a reasonable doubt, I'll be the first in line to second that request, Aryans.

 

Yes i believe it exists, and would love to prove it but i can't reveal the URL or site details.

But here is a look at a Minus 60 penalty in action. Note this isn't a "one off" glitch i have seen it on a number of effected sites.

True, Google hasn't came right out and said yes we have -10, -60 or -950 penalties but they have offered plenty of hints and never denied it. They have also offered suggestions on how to fix effected sites before submitting a re-inclusion request over on Google Groups.

Matt has even said there is different "levels" of penalty for different offenses, there's not too many options this could mean other than a SERP or Pagerank reduction.

Edit: Also have a read of This Thread over on WebmasterWorld on the -950 and Google penalties. It's several pages, but has a lot of info from people effected.

 

Simply Don't follow Black Hat Tactics...
Thanks for sharing...

 

I think it still exists. I have noticed some sites that are penalized by Google with 950 plus penalty

 

it existed 2 weeks ago - that's for sure ;-)