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.
rustybrick in Google Optimization at December 27, 2007 7:04 AM
Comments (9)
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