I noted that for several searches at Google that produce very few results, a site I work on appears to be 'excluded' from the SERPs. The site is listed for some other searches and in most cases, 90% of the sites that are returned for these searches link to my site.

Could this be a case of a manual penalty, breaking a rule I'm not aware of, etc.? Thanks for your help in advance.

Here's a list of some of the searches:
- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22hard+money+lenders+%26+bridge+loans%22&btnG=Search
- http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bridge+loans+nationwide%22&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&start=0&sa=N
- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22bridge+loans%22+%22avatar+financial%22&btnG=Search
- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22hard+money%22+%22bridge+loans%22+avatar&btnG=Search

The site is www.avatarfinancial.com, and if I didn't know better, I'd say that Google had put a ban on showing the site in the SERPs for certain phrases...

Certainly I'd like to explore this more for the community than my own specific situation. If anyone else has a similiar situation, please let me know so I can try to find common factors.

Yea probably a penalty cause you let your doorways get indexed

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.avatarfinancial.com+%22hard+mone y+lenders+%26+bridge+loans%22&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&filter=0

and you didn't think to change the content even a little bit :o . 2 sites having the same content is enought to trigger an alarm but as many as you have. I'd turn off the doorways, get rid of the redirects and pray to God.

seomike - As far as I know, I don't have any "doorways" or re-directs. Are you referring to the URLs set up here:

http://www.outsourcing.org/modules/directory/viewcat.php/cid/556
and the one at iallset.com - http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:8WLRhw83jwEJ:iallset.com/go.php%3Fl%3D250+%22hard+money+lenders+%26+bridge+ loans%22&hl=en

These weren't set up by me - it's just how the directories pass visitors to sites, I assume because they don't want to use direct links. I submitted my site to outsourcing.org, but iallset.com is new to me, I'm not sure who they are...

Is this what you're referring to? Can it really be that easy to 'take down' your competition...

as many as you have how many do I have? where? why? how!!?

Well whoever those pages belong to they are messing with your SEO. They are complete duplicates of your site's pages and are IMHO bad.

I'll try contacting the people who run the sites and ask them to remove our info - it technically violate copyright I believe (since it's taking the entire HTML code).

There should be more warnings about this type of thing. I thought I was helping when I submitted to outsourcing.org... I'll be sure to make a full analysis and report and post back one it's been down for a while and Google has re-spidered.

Thanks seomike.

Your listings and the link listings shown in the search results seems like you have been grabbed by all the wrong players...
they could all be part of one submission... so if any of them are a company you have advertised with the rest maight just be affiliates as it were.

Aussie -

Thanks for your help. I see only two sites that are doing it at this point (let me know if you see others):

outsourcing.org - Talked to the site owner today who assured me it was helping, not hurting my rankings and that he did this because it's good for SEO. I asked him to remove it anyway and said thanks.

iallset.com - can't contact, Ukranian registry

I have sent a DCMA violation letter to Google regarding this issue and hopefully that will resolve it. Sadly, I didn't advertise with either of these companies, rather, it appears they picked up my site independently.

It's scary to think that you could hurt your competitors by doing this...

Generally you do not get penalized but for that statement there is always an exception and it looks like you fell to it.