When Search Engine Land reported last week that some sites were being hit by a mysterious plague called position six penalty, it created a stir among webmasters and SEO experts from SEL’s forums. None other than SEO guru Aaron Wall publicized this issue when his site was hit by the position six penalty. When a site is hit by the position six penalty, its number one or two rankings slide down to the number six position in Google SERP.
In the SEO world, this phenomenon definitely matters big time since SERP position is the bread and butter of SEO workers. Fortunately at Sphinn the incident became a big issue that it reached the attention of Matt Cutts.
Matt Cutts admitted that the reason for the phenomenon was unknown at first but they have isolated the SERP behavior and are now in the process of changing the behavior causing the position six penalty.
So, if you are one of those site owners who got hit by the position six penalty, be sure to inform Google through Webmaster Central and request for a reconsideration.
We all know how valuable SERP position is in SEO trade, it’s good to be vigilant about it at all times.
