Google Penalty???

[DeYo]

Is it possible that website receives some kind of penalty from Google without being totaly banned??? This is why I'm asking ...
My website - www.weddingtales.ca was performing VERY well for years for over 150 keywords until December 2005. Suddenly, traffic dropped, keywords that were #1 were on page 8 but site remained in Google's index and Page Rank remained the same - 5. Since then, we've tried fixing it numerous times but nothing worked. It's been over a year since it happened and I'm getting desperate. Anyone else with similar experience???

[incrediblehelp]

When you say you have been trying to fix it, I assume you mean getting relevant backlinks from Canadian websites?

[DeYo]

Well yes, even though we had tons of relevant links from Canadian sites even before everything happened. How else would you get PR 5? Also, I've tried optimizing the code, even re-building the entire site!!! Nothing helped.

[incrediblehelp]

What are some keywords you were doing well for on the .ca search engines?

[DeYo]

wedding cakes toronto - still number one, banquet halls toronto, wedding video toronto, wedding photography toronto, limousines toronto ... etc. If it had anything to do with wedding in toronto, I was number one.
I don't want to sound ungratefull, because I'm very happy that someone is taking their time to listen to me and even analyze things but it seems that we are missing the point here. I would really like to know if you or anyone else here had any similar experience. I feel that this is some kind of strange penalty where you don't lose your PR, Google doesn't drop you from the index but instead, they penalize some of your pages so they don't come up in a regular search. Possible or not???

[glengara]

Spam, G has loads of these type of pages indexed http://www.weddingtales.ca/emails/eelegance.html

now check the text-only cache....

http://72.14.221.104/search?q=cache:...&hl=en&strip=1

[DeYo]

Thanks glengara ... that's work of my previous "webmaster/SEO expert". We have recently redesigned the whole website but those email pages were just copied from the old one. Well, they are clean now too. Is there anything else that G could consider as a spam. I appreciate your input but I have to ask this question again "Is it possible to have a penalty for spamming but remain in the index and have PR intact?"

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by glengara

Spam, G has loads of these type of pages indexed http://www.weddingtales.ca/emails/eelegance.html

now check the text-only cache....

http://72.14.221.104/search?q=cache:...&hl=en&strip=1

Wow, your right, nice catch. No wonder Google is penalizing you. Spammy doorways like this will surely get you demoted. They should be killed immediately. Even then, once you spam and Google catches you it is hard to get that domain back to where it was.

After you delete these I would explain what you did in a Google re-inclusion form under the Webmaster Console.

[glengara]

*Is it possible to have a penalty for spamming but remain in the index and have PR intact?*

Quite possible, from what I see far fewer sites get banned/PR0ed these days, they just suffer from mysterious drops.

Not sure simply deleting those pages will do much for you, you may need a fine comb, an apology (with explanation) showing true remorse, and a promise of future good behaviour.

Otherwise known as a re-inclusion request as IH mentions...

[incrediblehelp]

If you have to maintain 2 websites with both the same content then consider blocking one with your robots.txt file. Otherwise the SE's will pick one to rank themselves, lower the rank of the other...eventually.

[DeYo]

Hey incrediblehelp, what 2 websites with the same content? I didn't understand your last comment.

[incrediblehelp]

Sorry wrong thread Deyo, ignore that comment.

[wesleyw]

Originally Posted by DeYo

Is it possible that website receives some kind of penalty from Google without being totaly banned?

YES

I have a site that is still indexed and still appears for certain terms, but 90% of the terms which it was in the top 3 position have become page 5 results now.

[DeYo]

Sorry to hear that wesleyw :(
Have you tried getting out of it??? Is there anyone who managed to get out of that penalty? I've tried re-inclusion requests and nothing. And my letter was very good :)