Google Rankings Disappear in August 2005

[fleetman]

Hi

First time post, so please bear with me!

My website: www.officefile.co.uk was doing tremendously well in the Google SERPS results up until August 24th 2005 - when it started disappearing before my eyes across the G datacentres.

Before this point, 7/10 new content pages written for Officefile would immediately be indexed by Google (freshbot) on page 1 of their results (mostly 3 word key phrases). This meant the site was earning a more than healthy income for me.

For over 3 months since the above date my website has not featured in the Google results at all (home page or subpages). Google has also recently 'switched off' all backlinks pointing to my home page? Officefile maintains good results in both MSN UK search and Yahoo Search. I do not understand why Google has penalised my website.

[Marcia]

fleetman, you're carrying PR and have 516 pages in the index. But about half-way through, the latter half turns into Supplemental pages for the rest of the way.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:officefile.co.uk&num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-11,GGLD:en&start=200&sa=N&filter=0

Some of the pages are run through the cgi-bin and return "access denied" but a great number are pages in the Directory section.

After about a 90 second look, my guess is to start looking there first. There appear to be a lot of very "thin" directory pages without any PR and relatively void of content, and they are just about duplicates, or close enough to it.

[fleetman]

Hi

Thank you for the reply.

I was using a base template for writing a lot of content pages, and then just changing the keywords, i.e. 'Imported Car Insurance' and 'Import Car Insurance'. These pages would be 90%+ similar content, 400-500 words, (with just keywords changed). I can understand this could (would) be construed as spam and have since taken the time to rewrite many pages from scratch (though not all yet!). I have also stripped out (removed) alot of the duplicate pages (i.e import car insurance).

In regards to the directory pages. Their are approx. 250 dir. pages that are very similar. In fact using this tool: http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php (useful tool), the dir. pages are 99% similar content. However the directory part of the site has been around since the website was first put on the web (September 2003) and has not prev. caused a problem?

The website now makes all of its income via commercial offerings such as insurance, finance and loans, the dir. section earns basically nothing. Would it be ok (sensible) to strip out the 250+ dir. pages and leave just a directory function consisting of the top level categories? I am willing to do this as the loss of revenue is serious, with a downturn in RFQ's for car insurance, personal loans etc..

fleetman