SEOs for almost a decade have been using the term "over optimization" for one reason why a site might start to not do well in the Google search results. Some call it the over optimization penalty. Well, Google's Gary Illyes confirmed that over optimization exists and can hurt your rankings.
Gary said on Twitter that over optimization is "totally a thing." He said that "it is literally optimizing so much that eventually it starts hurting."
Here is the set of tweets:
@bubba_ji That is totally a thing, but I can't think of a better name for it. It is literally optimizing so much that eventually it starts hurting
— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) May 24, 2017
Where does this come into play? Gary didn't say but think about over doing it with links (Penguin) or spreading out too many pages with tons of keyword variations (Panda). You see the point?
Is there something specific that looks for over SEOing a site in Google? Well, probably many algorithms do that on some level.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
