1script - 2:49 pm on Aug 23, 2011 (gmt 0)

Thanks for your input!

I had a similar thing happen to me earlier this year.

May I ask if you were able to un-ban some/all of these sites eventually?

Very diverse sites, about a dozen. All banned. Google only. The thing they had in common was adsense, or had adsense in the past. Little or no interlinking.

This, sadly, reads exactly as a description of my own problem. But: "or had adsense in the past" - if that observation had anything to do with the actual reason to ban, it smells of witch-hunt.

I'm very paranoid now, and much of the content I'm adding to the web is on third party sites. I think it's good content and it tends to rank fine.

That part I did not follow: if you contribute to other sites (which I also do), aren't the other sites' owners the only ones that benefit? Do you mean that you simply closed the shop? This sounds like you are, in fact, going on assumption that Google has a problem with you personally. I still can't see how they can care so much about one person or one business as to diligently go after every site they had. Besides, not all of my sites got banned. Was that the case with you?