Am I penalised by Google? And how can I find out?

[GeorgeTH]

Looking over the stats of my TGPs I notice that I get twice as much traffic from Yahoo (and some days even more from Altavista) than from Google...

Not that I complain about the Yahoo traffic and hits from Altavista, etc. But I wonder if my site(s) have been penalised by Google - for what I have in the ALT text of my spacer gif...

Last year I'd been with Google for yonks on page 1 results for "free porn" - partly because I used this as the ALT text for my spacer gif (just couldn't think of any better use - no direct intention to spam). Then I was suddenly dropped to somewhere into the 900-1,000 of the "free porn" results. And ever since my Google traffic isn't what it used to be - even for most other terms! I still manage page 1 or 2 results on Yahoo, Altavista, and others, but for the same terms I might be down on page 8-10 with Google...

So how can I find out if I have been penalised - and, if so, how can I change this?

[DangerDave]

George...

Need to know which page/domain you are talking about to truly analyse it.

"Free Porn" as usual is a highly competitive keyword... and there are alot of new players competing..

You may have be devalued, because of lost back links, change in keyword structure of your page and a couple of other reasons..

"Penalties" as such.. are normally pretty clear.. as in if you are penaised.. you are gone from google.. not just "lowered/devalued"

As an anecdotal obsevation..... I often see things ranked well on Yahoo... then not rank well on Google

DD

[GeorgeTH]

It's picXS I was talking about...

Overall: pretty clear since the page was dormant for almost 10 months, but right after I started updating again my PR went from 3 to 2, and then the other linkes dropped down several pages, too... Weird is that with no updates my PR stayed on 3 the entire time (used to be 4 before I lost the page 1 result for "free porn").

Cheers

[Bill]

You're clearly not penalized.

Positioning in google for a competitive term is like climbing up a sandpile- it's not stable, you are constantly slipping backwards.

The keyword spammers and the "authority" sites will almost always be able to push an ordinarily optimized site backwards. And your site isn't that optimized.

Your first effort should be to do the linking work that will improve your PR. PR still means something, even tho it's older apparant meanings have changed. However, your linking shouldn't be for PR alone, look for keyword relevant links, or traffic producing links since what you got is a TGP.

Devalueing is rampant in google anymore- there's only so many good spots to go around.

[T Pat]

Bill what's it take to be considered an "authority" site by google

[Linkster]

George - you definitely need to work on link trades - Google is showing some 30 backlinks to your site (of course this number is bogus but its good enough) wheras you are trying to compete with people that have thousands of backlinks from "same theme" sites.
Also - your original question - alt tags are a good tool - as long as they are not abused - changing the text around, some other terms that type of thing - but even more important is that Google will place importance on other key "html elements" of the page when changing their algorithm over time - so title tags might be more important, the on page text, and just about a hundred other factors play into the ranking of the site.

I do agree nothing is penalized there - you wouldnt show up in Googles results at all if you were

[Bill]

Pat, I put "authority" in quotes to indicate that it isn't an absolute concept, it's a kind of 'guess' term, to indicate something that a lot of SE guys think is probably happening with google positioning.

However, it's an older SEO concept, and is probably fairly accurate. There's an even older concept of the "hub" site that the more modern "authority" concept is based on.

There's no hard and fast definition, tho. Basically, an authority site has a lot of links pointing to it, has many pages of content, and updates often.

What really defines an authority site is that it ranks well. ;-} (because lots of sites have lots of links, many pages, and update, but for some reason google doesn't give them the "authortity" positions.)

For adult, authority probably starts at 5 to 10 thousand backlinks, depending on a lot of factors.

[T Pat]

Thanx Bill
Now I know why I couldn't find any info on Authority sites

[DangerDave]

http://www.google.com/search?num=50&...eo&btnG=Search