Google's rumored "Minus 30 Penalty" policy irritates site owners

[mandy]

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the Google rumor mill is not taking any time off for the holidays. Search engine optimization discussion forums and bloggers this week are speculating — and complaining — about the so-called "minus 30 penalty."

From what industry watchers say, it appears that Google is using an automated filter to downgrade the ranking of a site by 30 positions if the site is suspected to be using spam or other unethical techniques to improve search rankings.

Many Web masters in online forums say that they had top rankings on Google and now they cannot get beyond position 31 in Google, which is generally the top of page four. There are even reports of ranking at 31 for all of their keywords and for their branded domain names...

full article: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news...hp/3647321

[stardust]

I'm reallllllly starting to get the hair up on the back of my neck about google.  Their search algorithms and dictator-like rule changes are ruining people's businesses.  Seems like they're getting worse than ebay ever THOUGHT about being...and they are much bigger and more inflluential worldwide.  Rather scary.