It could be any number things that have caused this? Most likely the 'honey moon period' has finished.

Are they on the same hosting account? If so you may have mistakenly broken googles tos on one of your sites & the backlash has spread to the others.

If you can figure out what (if anything) you have done wrong then you can correct the problems and get your ranking back, other wise build some more backlinks

The pages dropped in the SERPs not the sites.

Most likely each MFA Index page was the only pages per site that was ranking on page #1 for your target keywords, am I right?

Build more internal supporting pages with keyword anchor-text pointing at the page you want ranked, then build external links pointing at the new internal pages.

they sound like ultra thin affiliate sites to me! 5 pages...that's it? I imagine the content blows pretty hard then.

Yes, same ip, adsense acct, analytics, etc will get ferreted out eventually.

Google also is starting to hate thin affiliate/mfa sites.. its like, you can feed a toddler little jars of baby food.. carrot mush, peas mush, squash mush, and eventually, it doesnt want these things.. it wants a bigger, more 'robust' variety of suppers. A new site is like a baby. Google waits and sees if it shows signs of growth, and if it doesn't after awhile, it figures that it's not contributing to their collective, and as other sites start to rank better, your sites de-rank.

You need to keep adding fresh content to these sites, as well as pouring quality backlinks to them. Sometimes it's much easier to focus on just a handful of ones that are (or have been) profiting for you, and let the rest go. Keep your interest in the ones you like, and focus on their growth, rather than constantly collecting and setting up micro niche sites. Thats my 2.5c

As Yukon points out, all that is irrelevant. Your sites share your Adsense publisher ID; Google sees all those sites under your account.

Regardless; micro-niche sites are a specific target of the Panda updates, particularly single-keyword-focused sites. There are patterns to these sites that will almost certainly get you dropped: EMD, single-keyword focus, weak keyword-focused content, 'unnatural' keyword group (keywords that are variations and 'ranking targets' rather than keywords that would be natural off-shoots of the site focus), and 'rank manipulation' backlink profile (lots of low-value backlinks from common low-value sites i.e. lots of forum profile links, irrelevant blog comment links, etc, particularly if they comprise the majority of your links, and were done during narrow time frames).

If your sites dropped en masse, it is a penalty application. Those can come in two ways: applied after a manual review, or a Panda hit. If it's a Panda hit, that means you met some Panda thresholds, and a hit was applied to your 'regular' algo ranking. In that case, you will have a very difficult time regaining your rankings. You'll have to look at and address your content, your backlink profile, your user metrics (time on page, bounce rate, etc), and get rid of any sub-standard pages.

If it's a manual review penalty, you'll need to figure out what the hit was for and fix it.

Michael

Just stop making micro niche sites. All my competitors with micro sites in my niche have been thrown way back after Panda, after being on pages 1-2 for as long as I can remember.
Panda finally put them where they belong.

This thread sounds like what happened to my websites. Most of my websites got penalized on August 2nd. With the timing I suspect it may have been a manual review. Each site was focused on a specific keyword phrase to the point that it probably is unnatural.

Has someone had success with fixing a situation like this? I am willing to pay a generous price to anyone who can help fix my websites.

Some of my sites had top 5 rankings for very valuable keywords. This may have helped trigger a manual review combined with onpage red flags. After the penalty, all keywords were page 5+. I haven't been checking recently, but usually I find them anywhere between page 5 and 7.

I also had another site on this same analytics, gwt, ip, etc. It kept its high rankings, but it was in a different niche and it had much more unique content and a less spammy link profile.

Google has been cracking down on thin affiliate websites, especially recently (as well as on AdWords). This is bad news with marketers whose sites do not offer much value (VAS).

Just a note before I log off... this has been happening A LOT lately. Very high quality sites get this penalty as well. In many cases it has nothing to do with website quality.

Building better, higher quality websites and doing everything else the same way you used to is NOT a good option any more.

I think so many people faces same experience nowadays with Google make so may changes with their search result, me too. As long you create a good content that valuable to your visitor and not only to make money you'll find.

My only suggestion here is go fwd build more sites and try to fulfill Google new guideline and don't give up.

seems ur having a bad week

What kind of links did you use? How many were sent to each site?

I was using the ALN Network, which on its own for backlinking was a big mistake i think. Im not blaming ALN, i should have had a wider link diversity.

Start adding more content of at least 500 words, add content to your main page until it's at least 1200 words, and build high-quality links. They'll probably eventually come back, but it might take a little time.

Sorry for my friend, but you have yourself a penalty on every site sitting on page 4-7.

Happens lots, they track down your websites via your analytics account, Adsense ID, etc.

Start rebuilding.

Ive had a site that didnt do well for a long time, I simply stopped backlinking and it rose in the rankings

Research some more sub keywords and write articles on them.

Feel for you, OP. We got hit with a similar situation in September. We lost Google rankings on around 100 sites which was consistent with what people call a -50 penalty. Some of the sites have continued to climb on Yahoo/Bing so they're still earning. We put quite a bit of time/energy into fixing the sites by editing/improving the content, adding content, adding links, etc. Some of the sites were "fixed" and some were not...the time and money invested (we think) was a wash.

No real help for you here, unfortunately. Make sure to vary your anchor text when linkbuilding...

did you ever recover these sites?

We had SOME of our sites recover, but some of the larger earners never did come back. They still ended up pulling in some income from Yahoo/Bing...but not as much as they were in their glory days. Ultimately, the work/time/$$ we put into getting the sites recovered was a wash with the income coming back in from the sites that did recover.