In the past, spokespeople for Google have stated that there is no such thing as an “over optimization penalty”. In the past they have also stated there is such a thing as an over SEO penalty. So, which is it?
It doesn’t matter because in unusual fashion Google has announced an upcoming change to their algorithm which does include an over optimization penalty. Google spokesman, Matt Cutts has stated as much.
According to Search Engine Land, Matt Cutts has stated, “We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”
So, what is unclear at this point are the parameters of “too many”. As in how many is “too many” or what percentage are we talking about. This announcement has put SEO’s, webmasters, web designers and website owners on notice.
We’ll just have to wait and see what the fallout is now from this most recent change.
