Google Penalty Question

**namanimal** · 04-19-2010, 12:44 AM

Hey guys,

I made a site and I was listed pretty well (position 3-5 on page 1) for a long time. I did something stupid and I changed the title about 4 times in 2 weeks to try to optimize it better and suddenly I was dropped to page 2 instantly.

This happened about 6 months ago, and it was slowwwwwwwwly been going up. Since that time, my site went from pagerank 2 to pagerank 3 and now it fluctuates between position 10 on page 1 and position 1 on page 2.

My question is does anyone know how long they will keep this penalty on my site? 6 months, 1 year, 5 years? I haven't changed anything on the site (title/description/meta) since that happened. Maybe there is something I'm supposed to do to fix this or its just a time limit until the penalty falls off.

Please help, I have no clue what to do if anything can be done. Thanks

**katherine** · 04-19-2010, 02:35 AM

What is the title currently cached in the google index ?
You may be able to force a refresh by adding your site to google webmaster tools.

**dcristo** · 04-19-2010, 07:02 AM

Originally Posted by namanimal

now it fluctuates between position 10 on page 1 and position 1 on page 2.

So it fluctuates between #10 and #11? Dude, this is not a penalty and is very normal.

**copper** · 04-19-2010, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by dcristo

So it fluctuates between #10 and #11? Dude, this is not a penalty and is very normal.

OP said...
"(position 3-5 on page 1) for a long time".

Off topic, I read some where that it said #10 and #11 get higher click-thru than #7 - #9.
I wonder if it's true.

**David G** · 04-19-2010, 11:27 AM

Why i the world do you think such normal minor fluctuation is a penalty?

**namanimal** · 04-19-2010, 09:02 PM

I've been using webmaster tools for over a year now.

The fluctuation between 10-11 is not what bothers me. It is that the site was slowly moving up on page 1, and when I changed the site title 4 times in 2 weeks, it suddenly dropped to the middle of page 2. Nothing else on the site was changed except for the multiple title changes. So I naturally assumed that the title switches were what caused the drop in listing.