Feb
5
What is the position 6 penalty?
It’s no fun at all when your hard-earned Google search rankings drop overnight! But that’s what happened in recent weeks to many webmasters who found their top-ranked websites suddenly drop to position six.
Strangely enough, it emerged that the websites affected by Google’s so-called ‘position 6 penalty’ were established ones with a long history of ranking in the first or second place for the search terms in question. It goes without saying that theories abounded of why this was happening and many feared that Google was clamping down on ‘overenthusiastic’ SEO that it considered manipulative and in breach of the Laws of Googleland.
Website owners breathe a sigh of relief
Well, the good news is that if your website has been affected by the position 6 penalty, you can sleep easy now. Google’s own Matt Cutts clarified last week that the position 6 penalty was the result of an error that Google was in the process of rectifying. Matt said:
When Barry asked me about “position 6″ in late December, I said that I didn’t know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We’re in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.
In general if you think a site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request in our webmaster console to ask Google to take another look at the site.
So what caused position 6?
It’s no secret that Google is constantly tweaking its search ranking rules and algorithms. Several theories have been proposed to account for the position 6 penalty, including that Google may be taking into account how often particular search results are clicked as part However, this seems an unlikely cause.
Most probably this phenomenon is simply a case of a rule or two applied too stringently. On the other hand, (if the conspiracy theorists are to be believed) it could be a portent of something up Google’s sleeve. But what exactly caused ‘position six’ is destined to remain hidden behind the secretive walls of Googledom no matter how much speculation there is.
Boost your website’s search engine rankings
If you were totally oblivious to the position 6 problem because your website rankings have never been anywhere close to the top ten, you might want to give our SEO team at Sorted sites a shout. We are available to discuss the best way to make your business stand out online by getting your website the search engine rankings it deserves. Get in touch!
Comments
Leave a Reply
View John Beckley's profile