Suspected Google Algorithm penalty and can't locate why

[FastLearner]

This post is deleted!

[AnthonyYoung]

I would actually need to see the domain to make an assessment... feel free to msg me privately, if you like.

[AnthonyYoung]

I would actually need to see the domain to make an assessment... feel free to msg me privately, if you like.

[FastLearner]

Thanks Anthony, I will send you a PM.  I appreciate it

[FastLearner]

Looks like it was a dupe content issue.  I changed the setting in webmaster tools to not index the reply to comment pages, a few days later all of my rankings came back.

[AnthonyYoung]

awesome, glad to hear it! ...although seems like a pretty harsh penalty for what it was. Did you manage this by utilizing the "ignore parameter" under settings?

[FastLearner]

Ya, well I can't say for sure of course that is what did it.  I agree it seemed awefully harsh given that the dupe content was simply indexing my replytocomments on the same domain.  But I fixed that and a few days later I was back.  So it might just be a coincidence, but the only other thing I did was two weeks ago I installed a plugin to redirect the non www to www.  So it might have been a combination of both of those things.

Yes, I went to site configuration in webmaster tools and it was set to "let google decide" I changed it to noindex any of those urls.

[AnthonyYoung]

Definitely keep an eye on this section as new parameters can pop up depending on plugins etc used with WP. WP can be a real nightmare.

Look in to W3 Total Cache plugin to help with page load speeds. I've used it with great success on a few sites.