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Has anyone else noticed profile pictures alongside LinkedIn profiles appearing in search, similar to websites with Google authorship enabled? I saw this happening briefly today across multiple verticals and the images seemed to be a bit larger than authorship images. It was also strange that this was happening for some profiles and not others (number of connections appeared to be irrelevant). I didn't get a chance to grab a screen cap before it was gone, but I thought this was interesting and hadn't seen it discussed anywhere else.

Yes, seems to be dancing between around #20 - #25. This dance would happen a good bit before this whole process started as well, so nothing new there.

And to follow up with the initial question, I'm now back at the bottom of page 2. Still not sure what happened there, but it appears to have cleared itself up.

Thanks for the time and effort you put into your reply! Here's some background info that might help paint the picture of what I'm doing/after...

I'm a freelancer that works from home in Simpsonville, a suburb of Greenville (by just a mile or two). Most of my client base comes from Greenville, and anyone in the area searching for creative services is going to be looking for "xxxxxx in Greenville, SC."

As far as my business is concerned, I started out just under my name but then registered with the government under Sandlapper Creative (and I'm using this in directories, as it sounds more professional).

I've actually been trying to standardize the listings, as you mentioned (and Google did come down on me for the keyword related title on my place page - fixing/updating that as well). Obviously, I have no problems giving my business name and phone number but I am a little reluctant to give my home address (if possible). Would just the city/state/zip be sufficient information on-site?

What kind of hosting plan are you on (shared, dedicated, etc)? There are a lot of annoying hacks going around affecting WP based sites on shared servers.

Good deal - I'll have to check that one out. I've had some issues with caching plugins before, but it really just depends on the individual setup as to which one works best in each instance.

Try this plugin to manage redirects from the WP admin panel.

I agree with several others that you should point users either to the homepage or main blog page after deleting those posts. The system will eventually realize what's going on and those errors will go away for you in Webmaster Tools.

Agreed on everything Tom said above - some solid advice here. You can also try YSlow to locate elements that are causing long load times.

I'll add to check how many database calls your site is performing as a result of the theme and plugins you're running - I have seen this absolutely kill performance. There's a handy little script to tell you some database stats found here.

There are a handful of caching plugins available, but I usually use W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.

Thanks for the input Ryan, I'll definitely look at implementing some of these things. I'm a bit gun shy about using the exact anchor text after getting pushed back so far in such a short time period, but I know that's important. I'm still scratching my head as to why I was on page 2 for this exact phrase one week ago and now I'm on page 6. Guess we'll never have a definitive answer on that one.

The URL of the affected page is http://jimferguson.me

The keyword phrase is "web design greenville sc"

I understand the algorithm changes and updates all the time, but a 40 spot drop all at once on just one key phrase is a little drastic, IMO

Yes, it was the homepage that dropped and I'm doing just fine on all of the other key phrases.

The website in question is here

The two directory sites were 1. listing my blog in Bloglines Local and 2. listing the blog in NetworkedBlogs.com

The backlink with the anchor text in question is a site-wide web design credit link in the footer from my photography side business site found here

The anchor text and title tag for the landing homepage was "web design greenville, sc" (have both been changed since, as noted in the original post).

Sort of a strange situation I'm having and I wanted to see if I could get some thoughts. Here's what has happened...

Monday morning, I realized that my website, which had been showing up at the bottom of page 2 for a specific result, had now been demoted to the bottom of page 6 (roughly a 40 spot demotion). No other keyword searches were affected. I immediately figured that this was some sort of keyword-specific penalty that I had incurred.

I had done a bit of link building over the weekend (two or three directory type sites and a bio link from a site I contribute to). I also changed some anchor text on another site to match my homepage's title tag (which just so happened to be the exact phrase match I had dropped in) - I assumed this was what got me. I was slowly beginning to climb up the rankings and just got a bit impatient/overzealous.

Changed the anchor text back to what it originally was and submitted a reconsideration request on Tuesday. This morning, I get the automated response in Webmaster Tools that no manual action had been taken.

So my question is, would this drop have been an automated deal? If that's the case, then it's going to be mighty hard to pinpoint what I did wrong, since there's no way to know when I did whatever it was to cause the drop.

Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions to regain my modest original placement?