tigertom - 9:29 am on Aug 6, 2005 (gmt 0)

1. To play devil's advocate:

I've read posters on WebmasterWorld saying they have sites with pages numbering in the 100,000's. If that's common, Google is doing what it's always done: use software to present the most useful results to users.

Which means dumping pages, and sometimes, sites. 100,000 pages of anything can't _all_ be top-notch.

They're a publicly quoted company now. Their shareholders expect returns. All they have is their SERPs, really, and lately, their brand. The heat is on.

They do an update, spammers get hammered, a few legit webmasters complain, put 'em back in, tweak the algorithm again, fewer complaints, more junk 'flushed', a good day's work.

That means that any page ...

- That doesn't have a few good external links to it,
- Has sections which are repeated elsewhere in the site, or on other sites,
- Has lots of links to other sites,
- Is autogenerated, so has flags that can be tagged

... is not as 'interesting' as it's opposite:

- A quirky hand-made page with authoritative, unique content, with links _to_ it from independent sites.

The trick for SEO is how to mimic the latter as easily as possible.

(Sorry if I'm restating the obvious.)

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2. I got my main site back in. Not too bothered about the satellites, which I've nuked, anyway.

Method:

a. Removed all the content similar to that on pseudo-directory-Adsense-scraper-autogenerated-link-heavy sites

b. Emailed Google, admitted what I'd done wrong, and what I'd done to correct it. Was very polite, short, and to the point; gave the full URLs of the sites involved. Made it easy for them. No waffle, no 'buts', no carping (I bet they get a lot of that).

c. Got a reply 'your request has been forwarded to
engineers'.

d. A few follow up emails about what I was doing to correct problem; again, short, polite and to the point. I skim long emails; I bet they do too.

Got another email saying 'thank you for your patience', or words to that effect (subtext: stop bugging us(?))

Back in again about one week later. SERP positions seem the same. PR restored.

My site is not a directory. It's an old, eclectic personal site on steriods. That probably helped.

I'm going to make damn sure I don't rely on one site, or search engine, in future, for my traffic.

Thanks to all on MWM that helped with their informative posts, especially (heh, heh) the Contractor.