The Position 6 Google Penalty

[Webnauts]

As you might know, Google has several ranking filters. Known are the -20, -25 filter, -30 filter, -100 filter, and the -950. Yahoo! does the same thing, but different filter ranges.

Webmasters are reporting that their rankings have dropped for some searches from a position two to a position six.

Have anyone been affected?

And what the is that filter about? Does it have to do with on-page or off-page factors?

Your contribution to this topic would be very appreciated.

[wige]

A four point drop? It is hard for me to imagine this as a penalty, per se, because I can't quite see it having much effect on the webmasters being penalized. Yes, they might panic, review their site, make changes, but in the end, they would most likely write it off as an algorithmic issue. I doubt it would have the corrective effect that knocking the offending site off the front page would.

My suspicion is that most likely this would be a result of changes in how some factor affects ranking. Possibly some type of link or link scheme is being detected and filtered out, or changes have been made to the way design elements are filtered out, which affects the way Google determines how relevant these pages are to the query. Personally, I would look for commonalities between the affected sites. If the sites were designed or optimized by the same company, I would look at common factors on page. If the sites share an advertising firm, or have partner sites or major advertisers in common, I would look off page.

But really, something like this change can become very difficult to track down, assuming that this is an algo change rather than an actual penalty, since there is no way to know how close a match the results are or were. For example, results 1 and 2 for a certain term could be 99.989% and 99.971% matches, and 1 and 2 for a certain other term could be 99.999% and 99.997%. If both sites in the number one position share a designer, who did something wrong that Google now filters for, they might each lose a hundredth of a %, so they become 99.979% and 99.971% for term one, 99.989% and 99.997 for term two. This means that there is no change in the SERPs for term one, but for term two, the sites would actually switch position. So you have no way of figuring out that it is actually that one commonality that only caused a loss of rank to the second #1 site.

[Peter (IMC)]

You just found this line "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." in a blog comment and decided to start a discussion about it, didn't you..

About nothing actually. This is like trying to discuss wether or not a fire made in afrika resulted in a specific rain cloude over oklahoma. "were you affected by that 10 hour fire that was made in afrika?"

Somebody says: "hey my site dropped from 2 to 6" and some other people heard that and say: "Oh mine too". Yeah that probably means Google did something.

-5 filter? Then why a drop from 2 to 6? That's 4 positions.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

-5 filter? Then why a drop from 2 to 6? That's 4 positions.

No. That is not the way filters work. Those filter are positions and not number of positions dropped.
For instance if you get nailed with the -30 penalty, you can not rank #27 or better.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

You just found this line "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." in a blog comment and decided to start a discussion about it, didn't you..

Maybe here? The Position 6 Google Penalty - SEO Workers

[Peter (IMC)]

The Position 6 Google Penalty? first comment, exactly what you wrote..

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

The Position 6 Google Penalty? first comment, exactly what you wrote..

Exactly Peter. And there is another link: Is Google Using a Position #6 "Penalty"?

I just wanted to keep the discussion here and hear objective opinions of others here.

Anyway, what do you think about this issue? Or you stick to your previous post?

I am not affected from any penalty, so to be honest I do not care.

Should the thread deleted or closed? We can ask the mods to do that if you think so.

[Peter (IMC)]

I can't see any reason why a search engine would say: "Let's make a rule that under certain circumstances a site won't get any higher than a certain position." But I can understand that people are seeing this behaviour, especially in Google, though Yahoo may have its own version too.

The historical data algorithms can cause a site to jump up or down in the SERPs. Mostly that is visible when a site drops like a stone or shows up from nowhere. But what you can also expect is a site to get stuck at a certain position (and this is all per keyword), simply because the sites above it have better relevance based on its historical data.

When a site doesn't have the required historical data, you can do what ever you want and it won't go up until the historical data allows it. (I know there might be exceptions.)

The interesting thing I get from this thread is that it appears in levels, rather than just the "in or out" kind of behaviour. I kind of knew this already, so this is just confirming it.

But, there's no such thing as a -5 or -10, etc. type of filter. It's like the sand box. Google doesn't have a waiting period for sites to get in the SERPs. It's just a certain behaviour you observe but that doesn't mean it was the objective. You know. you observe the sun going around the earth every day. But does it really do that?

[jtracking]

we have to remember that if our competitors changed, enhanced or optimized there site OR got some pretty decent backlinks that might make them drop too...

So Joe Blow selling candy canes is in the 5th spot, he then does some fancy SEO and gets about 6 quality links back to his site and suddenly the engines "like his site better" (so to speak) and he get's the top spot, well that just might bump you down a few notches or so...

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by jtracking

we have to remember that if our competitors changed, enhanced or optimized there site OR got some pretty decent backlinks that might make them drop too...

So Joe Blow selling candy canes is in the 5th spot, he then does some fancy SEO and gets about 6 quality links back to his site and suddenly the engines "like his site better" (so to speak) and he get's the top spot, well that just might bump you down a few notches or so...

Just one position, don't you think?

[jtracking]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Just one position, don't you think?

i'd have no clue, it would depend on tons of factors - on my site or my competitors - I might be wrong but...i've seen some of my sites jump a few spots up and down over the past few years...is this odd? Am I missing somethig?

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by jtracking

i'd have no clue, it would depend on tons of factors - on my site or my competitors - I might be wrong but...i've seen some of my sites jump a few spots up and down over the past few years...is this odd? Am I missing somethig?

No, I was just refering to your example... which would result in just 1 position.

[jimmy03]

My website got penalized by Google what should i do now?