The Google -60 penalty has been talked about in the SEO message boards and forums for some time. Google has not officially stepped forward to weigh in on this specific penalty. It has been up to SEO’s and Webmasters to come up with the name Google -60 Penalty by observation.

The observation has been that web pages that had previously been number one in the rankings were all of a sudden thrust into the number 61 spot in and thus the name. Now, because of the introduction of Google Sitelinks, this penalty is more obvious.

There have been a few occasions where authority sites occupying the number one position with Sitelinks have all of a sudden dropped to the top of the seventh page of Google results. The theory is that Google has penalized these websites for using spammy techniques on-page or for buying links from other sites.

The use of spammy techniques such as hidden text is a no brainer. Don’t do it. But, if indeed a website is buying links from other websites this is more troubling. This is troubling because how do we know these links are bought and not bartered for, or part of the business owners other properties or worse yet, part of sabotage from a competitor?

If this penalty does exist from the buying of text links, then the potential exists for competitors to manipulate each others page rank by buying links that point to the opposing website. This open door to negative SEO means the SERP’s may be damaged delivering more irrelevant results due to manipulation.

A few months back Google was asking users to tattletale on websites that buy links. Let’s hope the Google -60 penalty is not the result your nearest competitor but rather something that each web business can fix if it chooses to do so.

Filed under: Google