[ecommerce-guide.com]

Is Google's Penalty Icing Organic Search?
By Michelle Megna
December 5, 2006

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the Google rumor mill is not taking any time off for the holidays. Search engine optimization discussion forums and bloggers this week are speculating — and complaining — about the so-called "minus 30 penalty."

From what industry watchers say, it appears that Google is using an automated filter to downgrade the ranking of a site by 30 positions if the site is suspected to be using spam or other unethical techniques to improve search rankings.