When Search Engine Land reported last week that some sites were being hit by a mysterious plague called position six penalty, it created a stir among webmasters and SEO experts from SEL’s forums. None other than SEO guru Aaron Wall publicized this issue when his site was hit by the position six penalty. When a site is hit by the position six penalty, its number one or two rankings slide down to the number six position in Google SERP.
In the SEO world, this phenomenon definitely matters big time since SERP position is the bread and butter of SEO workers. Fortunately at Sphinn the incident became a big issue that it reached the attention of Matt Cutts.
Matt Cutts admitted that the reason for the phenomenon was unknown at first but they have isolated the SERP behavior and are now in the process of changing the behavior causing the position six penalty.
So, if you are one of those site owners who got hit by the position six penalty, be sure to inform Google through Webmaster Central and request for a reconsideration.
We all know how valuable SERP position is in SEO trade, it’s good to be vigilant about it at all times.
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Comments
7 responses so far ↓
Egyptian Mau Breeders on Jan 29, 2008 at 12:28 pm
My egyptian mau breeders website has been hit by the 6 penalty. After researching the web I found out that you should inform google, but it took about 6 months to take off the egyptian mau breeders website.
Pay Per Click Management on Jan 29, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I think i have a website that has fallen victim to the 6 penalty. This is the only instance i’ve seen and its a dynamic database driven site. Has anyone experienced a similar situation with a dynamic .net site?
Band Shirt Archive on Jan 29, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Where do I go to inform google of a potential problem like the 6 penalty? I definitely had something affect my rankings over the weekend. I’m just unclear of where to go report something like that.
ArticlesGarage.com on Jan 30, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I read a lot of webmasters complaining about this penalty lately but I noticed something interesting lately on SERP’s for the US area. Sites ranking well there ahve lost the rankings without changing nothing on site and off site. The same queries made on Google.com from other countries’ IPs are just fine but making the query from an US IP shows huge drops for a lots of sites. Maybe Google is putting a bigger emphasis on regional links?
Maybe a new tweak in the algorithm to devalue some backlinks? I saw someone on a forum with the same problem the last days. Anyone noticing the same thing?
Jacques Snyman for SEO Results on Feb 5, 2008 at 2:39 am
Algorithm glitches? Seems they’re trying to level the playing fields just a touch, and obviously one parameter was set too tight.
Filipina Girls on Feb 14, 2008 at 1:49 am
I am still not sure about this position six penalty. Many of my sites were moved from number one to number 12 or 15. I feel it was just because of change in the Google algorithm.
Automotive Social Network on May 25, 2008 at 8:41 pm
The ranking is always jumping around. Get used to it.
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