Over Optimization penalty hangover -

[SEOforGoogle1]

I know a few people here were hit with the "over optimization" penalty a while back, and it seems to have impacted one of my sites recently.

I wan't too concerned about that since it makes sense that if you are gaming the system, and getting thousands of links pointing to your site with the same info, makes it easy to throw a flag up.

However -

I also noticed every other top ranking keyphrases (about 40) were all dropped as well - and not just on the domain name. The site also has 5 subdomains, and all of their rankings have vanished.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

[jocelyn]

Not as bad, but a bunch of my high trafic pages are gone. No big link changes, no pages modifications or any other change that could have raised a flag... I would wait a bit and see if it's not just an update or an algo change.

[SEOforGoogle1]

I really, really hope that's all it is, but none of the competitors have dropped - just my site. :furious:

[SEOforGoogle1]

Amazing.

Just for the heck of it, I sent an email to Google to see what the sitch was , and here's the email I got back:

Thank you for your note. This is an automated reply to your inquiry about
your site's inclusion in the Google search results. We're always working
hard to provide comprehensive online assistance, and you'll likely find an
answer to your question at the following links:



http://google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=20921&query=disappeared&topic=0&type=f



http://google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=19760&query=disappeared&topic=0&type=f



If you have additional questions, we recommend reviewing the Google Help
Center at http://www.google.com/support for our most up-to-date
information. You might also try our online discussion forum at
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general



Finally, if you've exhausted our online help content, and you're still
having trouble finding an answer to your question, please feel free to
reply to this email. It's important to keep in mind that we'll only be
able to respond to your note if we can provide additional information
that's not currently available on our Help Center.



Thanks again for taking the time to write.



Regards,

The Google Team


So, added this url in my browser:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=www.seoforgoogle.com&btnG=Search

And instead of seeing my site, Google thinks my site is that which is found at www.hakusuisha.co.jp

I am completely baffled at how/why this happened.

Any ideas?

[George]

Did you notice that it fixed itself.
OR did you do anything?

[SEOforGoogle1]

Yes, one of my friends on the West Coast told me about this - at first I thought he was yanking my chain, but then I checked for myself and everything was back.

The only thing I did was send an email to Google asking to explain the situation - and PRESTO!

all is well again....for now :cool: