Google Penalties and Filters

Over the past couple of months I’ve encountered a couple of examples of Google no longer ranking the main index page of a website for search terms that previously returned the page on page 1 of the SERPs. I’ve consulted with a number of knowledgable people who have told me that it looks like a Google penalty or filter has somehow been triggered.

One site that is currently suffering due to this apparent filtering activity is www.ribsforsale.com. The website presents advertisements for Rigid Inflatable Boats that are available from the JBT Marine boatyard near Portsmouth. Up until around early December their main index page was reliably presented on page 1 of Google UK SERPs for the search terms ‘RIBs‘ and ‘Rigid Inflatable Boats‘. The index page is no longer ranked for these terms, but is still in the Google index and is still returned at the top of the SERPs for the terms ‘JBT RIBs‘ and ‘JBT Marine‘.

The site index page is not untypical for an e-commerce site, presenting thumbnails, prices and brief descriptions for all of the boats currently on sale. Since every one of them is a RIB or rigid inflatable boat this abbreviation and phrase is used repeatedly. There were around 70 boats advertised from their main index page, each with a ‘more details’ link that would open a full page description of the boat.

We have picked over the page in some detail and there are a few elements that would bear modification including the removal of Javascript to an external file and further introduction of text variation. As far as we can tell the page doesn’t contravene the Google webmaster guidelines and is not linked to or from any known bad neighbourhoods.

Our next approach is to radically re-write the index page, removing all boat advertisements to a separate stock page, presenting only general RIB and JBT related information from the index page. We’ve also asked Google for reconsideration, but we are not holding our breath.