Me too, Whitey. The only thing I can come up with so far is that Google discovered some connections or cross-ownerships in the backlink profile that they previously didn't see, or at least didn't act on with any kind of devaluation.

Tedster - that's my hunch re the backlink profiles.

To simply say our sites have returned is only a start to understand this. What was common amongst the backlink profiles of those sites that dropped then returned?

Why were other sites unaffected?

What was it that Matt and his team said [ my words ] to themselves " Ouch - look guys, we need to roll this back, until we get it right "?

Why would the minus 6 rollback not have adequately applied to some folks and Matt covered himself by saying you can file a reinclusion request. Maybe there's ome clues here. Or am I misreading his remarks.

One thing we can be sure of is that Google is on to something very special in their thinking, but maybe their first run was too aggressive and indiscriminant. Maybe it sucked everyone down when they discovered some valid exceptions should be considered. And the filter algo needed to be further refined to better differentiate sites.

The thing that intrigues me is that they choose a method which was simply top position minus 6 places. ie it wasn't bad enough, or blanket in it's method to bury the results completely. It was very specific positioning restrictions versus outright "dropping" of sites or so called -950 [ so called ] filter. What was their thinking?

Certainly, Google has demonstrated an ongoing desire time to better control the algo's that measure the differing power of links and link types and i think some folks in previous discussions on other threads underestimate Google's resolve to tidy this up.

So many question marks.

Why would a backlink issue affect only the top Adwords terms and not the rest?

Cheers

Sid

Matt covered himself by saying you can file a reinclusion request. Maybe there are some clues here. Or am I misreading his remarks?

I'd virtually given up on the reinclusion form except for the most extreme cases (ban). But now Cutts brings up the topic.

What do you make of his comment? If you have to file a reinclusion request over every penalty from the biggest (ban/-950) to the smallest (-5), does this mean it's a webmaster's responsibility to find out if he's been hit with a penalty?

You don't file the reinclusion request if you don't know you've been penalized. If you think you might have been hit with a penalty, you're supposed to file the reinclusion request!?

Crazy ^&^&%!

[This issue might be a separate thread.]

p/g

One thing we can be sure of is that Google is on to something very special in their thinking, but maybe their first run was too aggressive and indiscriminant.

Or maybe it was simply too obvious.

Or maybe it was simply too obvious

Exactly. I'll bet they turn this back on shortly but with a less obvious penalty.

Rather than pushing the penalized results to exactly #6, google could randomly select between #6, 7, 8 and 9 so nobody will notice.

Would someone please explain to me the LOGIC behind rolling it back to RE-IMPLEMENT it a few weeks/months later?

That makes absolutely no sense.

Who cares if it's "obvious" or not?!

It's "obvious" the -950 or -30 penalties are in effect. I haven't seen Goog panicking that people might "decipher" the cause of it.

In fact, it wasn't "obvious" at all, since only a few people even noticed it ...with their sites or in their niches.

Either the sites deserve their rankings or they don't. Google could care less if people in this thread or other high-profile SEOs "noticed" and commented on it.

Which leaves us, yet again, with the obvious conclusion.
IT WAS A MISTAKE.

It rolled out like a mistake,
it had sites inexplicably stuck at #6 for multiple keywords like a mistake
it was <gasp> admitted to be a mistake...

lol, NOW we get to hear all the "conspiracy theories"

As a few of us keep trying to say -- is it POSSIBLE that someone turned the dial BY MISTAKE too far?!
It is possible that that someone hit the "wrong" dial to begin with?
It is possible that it was mistake by a human being who wasn't focused on work, but the holidays like 99% of other people in late December?

Yet again, it amazes me how people believe MC when they should NOT and doubt him when he's actually being forthright.

[edited by: whitenight at 10:30 pm (utc) on Feb. 3, 2008]

Of course it is possible it was a mistake. It's not like traditionally anyone at the plex has ever addressed these types of issues at face value. Remember 302 page hijacks? That was an inherent issue with Google and I dont think Google has ever really come out, from what I seen, and stated that it was an issue with their engine. instead, they offer 'helpful tools' and ways for webmasters to fix problems that Google should have.

Without getting off topic, the book is pretty much closed for me on this one, and there is little than can be further extracted for review and research other than the fact that we may never know what caused it.

lol, NOW we get to hear all the "conspiracy theories"

As a few of us keep trying to say -- is it POSSIBLE that someone turned the dial BY MISTAKE too far?!
It is possible that that someone hit the "wrong" dial to begin with?

The notion that Google has a control room filled with dials sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. :-)

Yet again, it amazes me how people believe MC when they should NOT and doubt him when he's actually being forthright.

And just how does one really know when MC is telling the full truth?

I think the only "mistake" was google allowing this to run long enough that we noticed.

There's much to be learned from looking at other's mistakes. Just the existence of the #6 penalty is very interesting for observant SEO's.

The only thing I can come up with so far is that Google discovered some connections or cross-ownerships in the backlink profile that they previously didn't see, or at least didn't act on with any kind of devaluation.

It doesn't seem plausible that something this "mild" would be caused by cross-ownership related to backlinks. From what little I've seen, common ownership and what could be considered excessive incestuous linking can result in more of a negative than falling just a few spots to #6 - when it does at all.

Frankly, they really aren't being overly diligent with detecting cross-linked networks of sites. I've seen a particular network consisting of a few hundred sites with multiple pages with identical products across their sites coming up for the same long tail searches, in one case, occupying 9 out of the first 20 results for a search.

Yes, I'd tend to agree. Link farm schemes are a serious violation of Google's "terms," and attack the core of its algo, so whenever it detects them, big trouble results.

(Excuse the pun.)

And because IBLs are the basis of the algo, Google tends to err on the side of caution by not issuing penalties unless it feels certain there's a scheme against it.

p/g