Was my website hit by penguin 2.1?

Penguin? I thought the Humming Bird is in town.

I suppose it's possible. What kind of sites are you putting up? Are you either writing quality content and updating on a regular basis? As long as you keep in mind that the overall goal of a search engine is to provide the most up-to-date and unique, quality content -- based up what the user is searching for -- you should be fine. My traffic has either stayed the same or skyrocketed for no apparent reason, but it hasn't dropped.

Joey

Have you ever heard of the cliche "the house always wins?" (usually in relation to Casinos and gambling houses)...

Well I'll change that to "Google always wins." And they will always win. Google will unleash every animal, bird, fish and eventually vampire to make Internet Marketers dish up unique and quality content.

It's all about authenticity and Google is policing Cyber space aggressively. They have people locked up in some room just working on solutions to stop fake links, content spinning, rubbish content, fake rankings and every "malpractice that you can think of".

So what can you do to stay on the safe side of the big G?

Simple. Just build a honorable web business. Don't buy stupid links, don't post stale and copied content, don't do anything designed to fool any animal or bird that the big G has unleashed on the day....stay on the straight and narrow path and Google will be your friend.

In fact, if you stick to the straight and narrow path, the big G will build your business in ways you cannot do on your own (when everyone else's sites come tumbling down, the big G will only have your site to pin to the top of the heap).

If you find yourself struggling to build a honorable business that doesn't offend the big G, then maybe you are in the wrong business.

Sorry about your lost rankings and traffic. Start over and build your business on a hard rock this time round, not on quick sand.

Actually without providing a few more details it's impossible to give you an accurate answer: how old was your site, how much content did you have on it, what was your seo strategy?