MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

I’ve recently been browsing the odd webmasterworld forum discussion and formulating some idea of what the occasional disgruntled webmaster has observed around their sites, regarding the alleged and illusive minus 950 and minus 30 penalties.

The rough definition I’ve derived for each is as follows:

-950: The penalty applied to a page for some or other contravention of Google’s rules, that forces that page to rank somewhere around the last pages in the search results, for a given keyword.

-30: The penalty applied to an entire site when it violates some crucial rule, where the home page does not even rank highly for the website/company name.

Yes, the definitions are vague. This is because the reality is vague, in that the penalties themselves are mythical, fantastical, and fictional. The webmasters who throw the concept back and forth like a volleyball can’t, in all their inconsequential oratory about their problems, really provide a solid theory describing what these penalties actually mean. I can’t say where the myth originated, but currently it just seems like a time filler for some bored webmasters to preoccupy themselves or appease their expectant clients while stalling in lieu of more luck. You wouldn’t think it all a fallacy though, not when sifting through the endless discussion threads over the tired topic where some arguments can appear quite compelling.

In a year-old post by Matt Cutts about what features webmasters want more in their Google consol, one incensed commenter beats the idea into the ground, only to be aptly confronted by a sensible response from another irritated reader.

The idea that our sites can be assigned specific negative rankings to such a degree is a disturbing one, but seems too much like a horror story concocted by some doom-sayer SEO who had nothing better to do one uninspired day, to give it any serious consideration.

My search on Matt’s blog for the famous yet phantasmal 950 penalty only returns posts that have the odd mention inside the comments, rather than any word from the spaminator himself. His royal Googleness’s non-intervention can mean one of three things that I can think of:

• The topic is so trivial and insubstantial that it warrants nothing more than cold silence
• The topic is so rarely encountered and mentioned that Matt doesn’t even notice it
• The topic is actually so abundantly discussed that some have hit the nail right on the head, and Matt can’t speak of it or respond, for risk of slipping up and revealing too much.

All I know is that if my site ended up on the last page of results, and I had been making money or deriving some or other value from it, I would send a mail off to the spam team requesting a prompt and thorough explanation. That is of course if my site was definitely not violating any webmaster guidelines, because otherwise I would just look stupid.

I assume the big G have a very sophisticated method for ranking sites, and if they deem your site worthy of no higher than the last page, then there is probably a justified reason behind their cruel decision. It’s just unfortunate that your site ends up as the digital equivalent of the last guy picked for the cricket team because he wasn’t ever wanted in the first place.

I have only written this post based on research and reading. I have not encountered any of the supposed penalties myself, so I welcome with open arms anyone willing to please grace readers with their stories.