To be honest I understand the frustration. I’ve experienced it so many times on my sites. Too many people I’ve spoken with had suffered the same thing commonly known as “the google penalty”. What is the big story behind this common problem? Is there a way to battle it? Is it true that a small error could lead to it? I’ll try to present you some of my views and experiences about this matter.

I have been asked to post about this topic by my friends who operate a small MMO / SEO website which experienced such a penalty recently. How do they know it’s a penalty? Well it’s easy. Weekly they got around 100 Google hits daily (according to Google Analytics) and the next day (two days ago) their Google clicks simply decreased to 5-10 hits daily. They didn’t purchase any links, they didn’t exchange any links, they didn’t change anything on their site, the only thing they can recall that they did the day before is that they pasted a table they found on other site to their own. Now how confused are they. They were happy about each single Google visitor they received only to witness this kind of penalty. They don’t even rank on first page for their  domain name. And I hated to tell them that “Yes, I also believe you have a google penalty”. And yo ucan imagine how sorry they were. And I felt sorry for them too.

Now someone might say “Heh - what did they expect? They copied content from other site”. Now this sucks. Big time. One table from other site could cause a penalty?? If that is the case my friends, It’s time for me - a strong Google supporter (and shareholder if you like) to review some of my standing points with Google and it’s Algorithm’s. Did I mention that their site is not in English? I will not go any further into discussing the problems of duplicate content and how there are many legit cases when content could and should be duplicated, but thrust me I know a thousands of good and legitimate reasons for this. Thousands of times I’ve seen specific articles going down and I felt sorry for not preserving them on my site. Copying someone’s content followed with link to original shouldn’t be wrong folks! I am a strong believer in this and I challenge everyone to discuss this topic with me. I am definitely sure that shouldn’t EVER lead to a penalty like these folks experienced.

“It isn’t a penalty”. Ok then. They lost a huge part of their daily traffic. They don’t even rank #1 for their domain name which is not competitive keyword at all. They have other sites on same IP that still rank well so it’s not a server issue. Come on. IT IS A PENALTY. How do I know? Well the problem is that I DON’T. I AM PARANOIC. Why? Well Google made me. Because there is no single word explaining any penalties on Google webmaster help. Try searching for “Penalty” here. Nothing. Nada.

So guys lost their highly valuable traffic which left them guessing and wandering. While their competition is advancing. They have read the Google webmaster guidelines tens of times and they went step by step making sure they didn’t break any “Golden Google Rules”. And again, they found nothing.

Why do I care folks? Well coz I’ve been there. We all were. And I feel sorry for these guys. With so much market presence Google should definitely care more about people whose websites were affected with these irrational switches in Google behavior. I remember getting mails telling me that I should read guidelines and that they have many requests and that they can’t cope with them all. That’s coz they are so big. And who made them so big? Well we did. People like me who worked their ass off online for the last 10 years. Now the least they should do is pay some more respect and at least guide us to mistakes that lead to these stupid penalties. Will it be an online tool or their support - I don’t care, as long as it’s fast and informative.

I want to compete. That is ok. I want to invest. But don’t leave it all in mist Google, coz you might end there as well. Let my words be remembered.

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