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BigDeanEvans · 03-14-2008, 02:08 AM

this might be of help if anyone bumps into this thread...

---plucked from another board --

I found this thread a few weeks ago & it made me realize that I possibly had the "over optimization" penalty in my site's navigation structure. I fixed the issue & all my rankings returned within a few days. I was thrilled!

We had lost most of our rankings since August, but there were a few that were never dropped. I'm not sure it was the 950 penalty. but it was definitely some sort of penalty for highly relevant terms that we used to rank within the top 5 results for.

Our site navigation included all of our services pages, down to sub-categories. It is a CSS-based drop-down navigation, so all the html links appeared on every page. It was something like a main category of Widgets. With 4 sub-categories that could be something like widgets by shape, widgets by color, widgets by material, widgets by size. Then under those categories there were more widget phrases such as red widgets, blue widgets, green widgets. This was never intended to be spammy, it was completely user-friendly navigation from our perspective. We wanted visitors to be able to go exactly where they wanted from any page on our site. We had this navigation for more than 2 years without any negative effect on our rankings.

So, after reading this thread I decided to modify the navigation as a test. I kept Widgets as the main category. Then kept widgets by color. Then all the pages within that category I changed to just red, green, blue, etc. Basically I removed all the extra widgets used in the navigation as long as the main category already used it. I still think this makes the navigation less clear for users, especially if they hit a sub-page from a search engine. But Google likes it. All my rankings came back to exactly where they were before.

I did not change any page names, page text, or titles or meta tags. I only changed the phrases used in the global navigation structure.

At first (in about 2 days) I saw about 25% of the rakings bounce back & I was able to verify that those were from pages cached after the navigation change was made. I was able to track for the next few days which pages were cached next & I could then predict the new search rankings based on those newly cached pages. The cause & effect was pretty clear. After about 5 days, all the important pages had been re-cached & our rankings all bounced back. I really can't belive this navigation issue was the cause of our ranking penalty since it didn't occur to me to be spammy in any way. I feel like I almost lost my job over it. But at least I finally figured it out.

03-14-2008, 02:08 AM
BigDeanEvans So Fucking Banned Industry Role: Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 1,368	this might be of help if anyone bumps into this thread... ---plucked from another board -- I found this thread a few weeks ago & it made me realize that I possibly had the "over optimization" penalty in my site's navigation structure. I fixed the issue & all my rankings returned within a few days. I was thrilled! We had lost most of our rankings since August, but there were a few that were never dropped. I'm not sure it was the 950 penalty. but it was definitely some sort of penalty for highly relevant terms that we used to rank within the top 5 results for. Our site navigation included all of our services pages, down to sub-categories. It is a CSS-based drop-down navigation, so all the html links appeared on every page. It was something like a main category of Widgets. With 4 sub-categories that could be something like widgets by shape, widgets by color, widgets by material, widgets by size. Then under those categories there were more widget phrases such as red widgets, blue widgets, green widgets. This was never intended to be spammy, it was completely user-friendly navigation from our perspective. We wanted visitors to be able to go exactly where they wanted from any page on our site. We had this navigation for more than 2 years without any negative effect on our rankings. So, after reading this thread I decided to modify the navigation as a test. I kept Widgets as the main category. Then kept widgets by color. Then all the pages within that category I changed to just red, green, blue, etc. Basically I removed all the extra widgets used in the navigation as long as the main category already used it. I still think this makes the navigation less clear for users, especially if they hit a sub-page from a search engine. But Google likes it. All my rankings came back to exactly where they were before. I did not change any page names, page text, or titles or meta tags. I only changed the phrases used in the global navigation structure. At first (in about 2 days) I saw about 25% of the rakings bounce back & I was able to verify that those were from pages cached after the navigation change was made. I was able to track for the next few days which pages were cached next & I could then predict the new search rankings based on those newly cached pages. The cause & effect was pretty clear. After about 5 days, all the important pages had been re-cached & our rankings all bounced back. I really can't belive this navigation issue was the cause of our ranking penalty since it didn't occur to me to be spammy in any way. I feel like I almost lost my job over it. But at least I finally figured it out.