Many people believe that their results drop in rankings because Google has penalised them, others believe that these penalties don`t exist and that a drop in rankings can be attributed to Google`s re-indexing. Both sides have valid points, as well as some arguable flaws in their arguments, however, it`s better to be safe than sorry so let`s just consider the possibility of Google penalties.

There have been reports of occasions where results have dropped drastically in a short space of time. Where once searches stood proudly on the first page, they can now only be found cowering in 31st place or lower, even a search for the domain name only produces results that appear at the top of the 4th page. Spooky I know, and it affects all the pages throughout the domain. This is what they refer to as the “-30” penalty, as sites tend to drop an average of 30 positions. Whether the reason for the drop was because of a penalty or a re-index, there is obviously something that Google doesn`t agree with on your site. If by any chance you are an optimist, the good news is this is seen as a relatively light penalty from Google, and can be overcome relatively quickly and easily by making the appropriate changes to the site and then re-submitting it to Google.