The Position 6 Google Penalty?

WebmasterWorld administrator, tedster, has compiled the feedback of the December 2007 Google SERP Changes thread, which we covered earlier in a new WebmasterWorld thread. In this thread, he says there is a pattern of reports he has been noticing where webmasters are reporting that their rankings have dropped for some searches from a position two to a position six.

Tedster summarizes his findings:

Well established site with a long history.

Long time good rankings for a big search term - usually #1

Other searches that returned the same url at #1 may also be sent to #6, but not all of them

Some reports of a #2 result going to #6.

He explains that most the reports say it is not site wide but rather search term specific. Plus, he adds that is seems to be off-page related and not on-page related. That means, he believes the cause for such a "position 6 penalty" is caused by linkage reasons and not your on-page SEO.

Is there something to this new "Position 6 Google Penalty?" Is this just an excuse for some holiday forum chatter? Let the forum discussion continue...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at December 27, 2007 7:04 AM Comments (12)

Comments

It's probably a -5 ranking penalty. Google has several ranking filters. We know of a -20 or -25 filter, -100 filter, and the -950. Yahoo! does the same thing, but different filter ranges.

Posted by Joe Griffin at December 27, 2007 17:29

Hmm. I'm not aware of anything that would exhibit that sort of behavior.

Posted by Matt Cutts at December 29, 2007 01:28

Matt are you saying your not aware of any of the filters mentioned above?

Posted by Jaan Kanellis at December 29, 2007 11:56

Well, i have experienced such search behaviours in past... It might be few filters or it might be none (like matt said)!

But something about lack of off page optimization affects it.

Posted by Azhar Iqbal at January 1, 2008 01:02

Perdonad que escriba en español pero no se inglés
Tengo esta web http://www.coches-belgica.com era primero en "coches de importacion" y he pasado al sexto puesto. ¿Será esto penalización posición 6?
cuales son los motivos de esta penalización? que puedo hacer mara modificarlo?

Posted by coches at January 18, 2008 10:33

Great Information. Goolge consistently seems to be growing and adjusting. The strange thing is I have held the #1 spot longstanding with google on a keyword for no apparent reason I was bumped off. Where did I go. HMMM and why. Google Seems to be consistently testing us seo'ers.

Thanks for this info
Megan
http://www.PassportMentors.com

Posted by Megan at January 26, 2008 06:02

Have you run an analysis on the sites that are now ranked ahead of you? Perhaps your competition has one-upped you, and you gotta go and figure out why.

Posted by Jacques Snyman at January 26, 2008 13:15

The pages ranked ahead of you, are they johnny come lately's or established competitors of yours?

Posted by David Marx at January 26, 2008 13:19

It seems Matt found the glitch and rolled it back:
http://sphinn.com/story/24687#c29022

Posted by Sebastian at January 29, 2008 05:07

I've wondered about the "specific term" idea. I was previously under the impression that penalties would be site wide, but there seems to be mounting evidence that specific terms can be penalized.

Posted by Dwayne at October 20, 2008 17:25

What is the fastest way to lift google penalty?

Posted by Tama at November 1, 2008 05:31

we also one site penalized in Google -30 penalty, but still we are struggling to recover from it. give me some more tips so that we can lift it from Google serp.

Posted by james at June 18, 2009 08:21

The Position 6 Google Penalty?

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