Some more info. Most if not all of my sites were PR 3 & 4. They all have unique content, privacy policies, etc.

I'm so bummed right now I've been working on these sites for the last 6 months and they had finally broken the $1,000 a month in income barrier last month.

Seems like this review site may have original review content, but cannot be seen as an authority site in your niche. Google has dropped the hammer on many review sites and they've finally caught up with yours.

The only way to get traffic to them may be to use PPC or set up blogs, squidoo lenses and articles that link directly to your sites. This will take a lot of work, so maybe you should choose your top performing sites to focus on now.

Seems like this review site may have original review content, but cannot be seen as an authority site in your niche. Google has dropped the hammer on many review sites and they've finally caught up with yours.

The only way to get traffic to them may be to use PPC or set up blogs, squidoo lenses and articles that link directly to your sites. This will take a lot of work, so maybe you should choose your top performing sites to focus on now.

I'm looking at the site on an iPhone and it seems fine from what I can tell. I'm not sure so I'll ask - is Pilates a trademarked term? If so, maybe the cause? The content itself doesn't look scraped so u seem ok in that regard (unless it's PLR?)

Wow Nate, that sucks man. I am curious as well about your SEO methods. What were you doing?

I've seen the same thing on some of my "dedicated" Amazon sites - IMHO those do not work anymore. Better to integrate Amazon into a site, not build the site solely on/around Amazon. Google sees the latter as "thin affiliates" and de-indexes them.

Are you sure your content is unique? Copyscape thinks otherwise.

Lastly, I think your domain name may have contributed too ...

Just my 2 cents - good luck!

None of my content was scraped and I don't believe that Pilates is trademarked...and for sure my other sites don't have any thing in the domain name that is trademarked.

All of them got deindexed some time overnight the day before yesterday. I noticed it this morning when I did my daily check and only had a few click over to amazon. I then checked my analytics account as I do every morning and no clicks there either.

I then did a site: and nothing.

As far as unique content. All reviews were written either by me or someone that I paid to write them. The only thing that is not unique is one of the posts that can be seen to the side. That is an Ultra Spinnable Article I spun changed up a bit and posted. I did to add some content while I was writing more reviews. I also used one of these on one other of my sites, but that is it.

Sorry to hear that. Its hard to say why without knowing more about your backlinking methods and frequency. One thing we do know is GA allowed them to easily hit the switch on all your sites. You probably caught their attention with 1 site and they punished you hard.

To all those who will listen GA is sleeping with the enemy. The return for data given to letting G see all your sites is NOT worth it. There are other analytic platforms out there that will supply you with the info you need to make sound decisions on your sites and allow you to sleep better at night.

As far as what to do now, I would do the following:
1. Forget about those sites.
2. Build new sites
3. Analytics with Get Clicky
4. Split your sites on several hosting accounts

Good Luck

My SEO methods have been SENUKE, BMR, and ALN.

Any WSO's or other information on how to save my sites?

Or is it just a lost cause and start over?

@wolfmmiii any other ideas to why this got deindexed?

Are there things that are blatantly missing that your sites have or did I just hit some bad luck?

The pilates site does look abit thin. Just reviews and two articles. Not exactly giving value to the end user. Perhaps if you cranked out some more articles (not reviews) the sites wouldn't have been de-indexed.

Having Google analytics DEFINITELY was the key to having all of your sites de-indexed.

If you want to salvage the sites at all, remove anything google related from your site and continue linking.

@clayden I wouldn't say that I'm giving no value as the average time the user spends on the pilates web site was around 2 mins, either way any suggestions

@cool hand luke- have you heard of sites bouncing back like this? If so I could move them to new hosting, take off google analytics, and keep backlinkg and writing articles. I just want to know that it's a worthwhile investment of my time (meaning is there a good chance that I can get these back)

Most of those paranoids also run Adsense, & think Google won't track their pub-ID, Lol.

You can find those guys chasing UFOs on the weekends.

Were they all hosted on the same server?

Oddly enough I had the same thing happen with the acception of one site made with associate-o-matic that has zero origional content...... strange.

3 out of the 11 sites were on unique servers and 8 were on the same server (hostgator).

@yukon- accept that I was running any adsense...so I think you do need to be paranoid about google analytics now

So, why if I search for this snippet of content from your site do I find 920 exact matches:

"the following paragraphs contain fundamental principles and strategies to working out and achieving your physical goals"

Houston, I think we have a problem.

@Barry- Hi, as I said above all the reviews are unique and either written by me or a paid writer. The two articles on the side, I thought there was only one, (I put at most 4-5 throughout the 11 sites) are from vita-vees uniquely spun articles. A few things were changed like the title to tie them into the site however they are not unique. Most of my sites however have 100% unique content. I used these articles to submit to article websites and other web 2.0 properties.

Ok, so the jist of it everything so far seems to be. That I needed to add some more unique content so it could pass a manual review.

So the big question that still hasn't been answered is....Can I save these sites? If yes how do I do it?

you missed or ignored the part about

Your contact page lacks any contact details. It's just a form. It needs a email, phone number and physical address
- Your About page is a single sentence that reveals nothing

Ok, so for my new sites also the contact page information should be fixed.

I'll have to look at some examples on other peoples about pages to see what kind of things should go there.

Thin affiliate sites + spammy link building = google pwning

Maybe instead of building 11 new blogs you should make just one. Rather than having 11 different websites with 3 unique articles each if you built just one with 33 unique articles then you would be in a much better position never to get de-indexed.

Sucks man don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify.

Hi Nathan

Sorry to hear about your de-indexing problem,I took a quick look at your site and I noticed a few things right away,just like some people said your contact page needs more information,but that alone wouldn't get you de-indexed,I picked out a random article from your site "http://www.pilates-reformer-machines.com/reviews/stamina-aero-pilates-machine/"
first thing I noticed is the word "Pilates" it is way over used,I counted it about 33 times in that article alone,Google doesn't like keyword stuffing,second I noticed a hidden link to wikipedia which I'm sure seems deceptive in Google eyes,third problem is way to many links to Amazon,I counted something like 9 Amazon links in that article which are also dofollow links,that won't get you de-indexed but you should always put the nofollow tag to your affiliate links,by leaving those links as dofollow your passing page rank to the Amazon product page and by doing so your working against yourself by linking dofollow links to the product your trying to out rank in the first place.

I would also get rid of the review theme,these themes yell out I'm an affiliate site trying to make money and we all know Google has these site in it's radar these days,mix up your content also,don't have a site with only reviews and affiliate links,have also helpful articles that can solve your visitors problem with no affiliate links.

And for the reviews keep your Amazon links to a maximum of 2 to 4 links,you can place a link in a picture and also have one at the end of the article saying you found the best price for this product on Amazon.com or something like that.
One other thing could have been you backlinked the site to hard,what was your senuke strategy,to many links to fast will hurt your site especially for a new site.

I hope you can get things sorted out with Google.
Good Luck


Steve

Were you using the same theme on all 11 of them?
How were the rankings?

I've had sites monetized by amazon sandboxed, but never deindexed.
So I'm curious as well as to what may have triggered the deindexing.

@steve- I haven't decided if I'm going to rebuild or go with a different plan yet but if I do rebuild I'll definately take your advice to heart.

@ninal- yeah, they all had the same theme going on. As for ranking, I was getting most of my traffic from the top four sites an average of 350-500 a day. With all four ranking for their top keywords.

As a noob I took the design and everything I did with these sites from the amazon "gurus" who's WSO's I purchased. I had heard about these things happening but didn't really feel like I was doing anything blatantly wrong, so I never thought it would happen to me.

I know I have the drive and smarts to make this happen, I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice as to a different path that I should invest my efforts in?

A few months ago one of my sites got deindexed also. I assume because I got somebody from Fiverr to provide about 150 google +1 votes and Facebook likes. The day after the service was over, my site was not indexed anymore.

I then eliminated all google+ and likes buttons from my sites and did nothing else. After two weeks the site was back on a better position in serps than ever before.

So it's possible for sites to be re-indexed, but I think that you need to fix your faults first.

Yeah, I think the site itself actually looks okay - I've seen wayyy worse for sure.

One thing that hasn't been addressed too much, at least by the OP, is those backlinking methods. SENuke and all the other stuff, it seems pretty aggressive, and my guess is that is the #1 reason for de-indexing.

Also the keyword stuffing. If it is over-stuffed and unnatural, that's pretty easy for a manual reviewer to pick up, or a spider.

Others have pointed out a lack of original content, and if that's the case, that may be a problem too.

I think niche sites just need to be done 10000% by the book these days - keep everything fresh and properly linked and visitor friendly.

I think you need to do some action, do not give up easy:
Remove the spun articles, and replace by new articles, show more content at first page. Or you can change all content by new and unique one, make it naturally, do not try to use much keyword on your content. After that build link again with some basic way to index your site as social bookmark, blog comment.
If one week pass and your site is still de-index, you may buy a new domain and transfer everything to there. Restart the game.

Is it possible that your keywords shot to the #1 position too quickly given how new your site is?

For a site that is around 6 months old (correct me if I'm wrong), you were able to shoot past some of the major authority sites, maybe that triggered suspicion by Google.

I checked one of your keywords (Pilates Machine) in Google, and right now About . com, Amazon and Walmart dominate the top few positions. If you were able to get to #1 in 6 months with that kind of competition, maybe that's an issue with Google?

As for your theme, it's the same one that Jan Roos uses for some of his sites, so I don't see that would be a problem.

One of Jan Roos websites looks very similar to yours, it's also an Amazon affiliate site, and he only has 9 indexed pages and the site is quite new too. So I'm a little baffled.

I can understand if Google wants to sandbox you, but to deindex all your sites seems a bit drastic.

It actually think your site looks pretty decent, it just needs a few more pages of content.

It scares me a bit, because your site looks better than some of mine. Now I know I have to make some major changes to my sites!

@SG- my link building methods for all my sites used senuke, bmr (in the past), and aln. I was pretty aggressive and I had probably about 9K links spread out over the entire site. I don't think this was a problem, but maybe the keyword stuffing was. Although here again I followed the "gurus" guidelines and had my targeted keyword for each page at around 2%.

@corell yeah, Jan is one of the "gurus" who's material and ideas I followed

@frank yeah, I'm going to start some kind of action plan today and try to save the sites

@corelle- there isn't any difference in his site and mine as far as I can see because I used his formula

things that people said I did wrong
-contact form (his is the same)
-to many affiliate links per review (I opened up his first review and like mine he has 9 links to amazon including the pic)
-hidden google link (didn't look but I took that straight from his course)
-no articles just reviews (he doesn't have any reiviews)

My point is only to reiterate that my websites were the result of following what I read in several guru's WSO's. I think what I did was pretty standard. I guess I just had some bad luck.

@corell & Dustin- I think this formula can still work, but now you can go in knowing some of the risks

@natec. Someone on the first page of the thread mentioned that there is a keyword appearing about 33 instances on one of your articles. Could keyword stuffing be the reason? What was the density for that keyword?

What do you mean by hidden google link?

nah, not sure how many times the word "pilates" appears, but I use an seo pluggin and always have my keyword density at around 2% so in this case the keyword was "pilates machine" so in my 600 word review it would appear about 12 time but the word pilates may appear more. From my research that seemed to be about the sweet spot, however I'm open to suggestions.

yeah the jury is still out on whether or not to put google analytics on your sites that have adsense. I've heard from big name bloggers that make a killing via adsense to never put analytics on the site. Maybe they're being paranoid....but hey if google can see everything that is happening with your sites and all the ones you own....then there might be a reason to be paranoid.

Oh, also the "hidden google link". So I learned from the "gurus" that you should link out to an authority site. I usually use google or wiki. So I link to something pertinent on one of those sites however instead of making the text a different color to denote a link I keep the color the same as the surrounding texts.

It's not really hidden in that if you scroll over it the cursor changes and the link can be clicked on it's just not highlighted or underlined.

Oh, also the "hidden google link". So I learned from the "gurus" that you should link out to an authority site. I usually use google or wiki. So I link to something pertinent on one of those sites however instead of making the text a different color to denote a link I keep the color the same as the surrounding texts.

It's not really hidden in that if you scroll over it the cursor changes and the link can be clicked on it's just not highlighted or underlined.

Did you interlink all of the sites?
If you haven't done anything shady then continue building links like nothing has happened and hope that your sites get back on Google.

You guys pointing to Jan's site, it's the same. He just hasn't been "caught". It's a known FACT that there are manual reviews of sites. And if sites are found out there that are thin affiliate sites that exist "only to make money", then Google deems it unworthy and will zap it.

This is not speculation. This comes straight from Google quality guidelines as well as an internal Google document that went around that instructs "at-home" workers going thru sites manually to determine their "value" according to Google's definition.

It might not have been this site that got the OP zapped. It could have been any of the other 11.

The days of thin, ****ty affiliate sites are over. If you do this, then you better space out your hosting, registration, etc and cover your tracks and not link them. Because if they catch one they will zap them all. If they aren't deindexed, they will get hit with an algorithmic penalty. And honestly when it comes down to it, it's basically the same. You might as well be deindexed if you are not on teh first page, because you aren't getting traffic anyway.

Your sites must give VALUE to the visitor. They must not OBVIOUSLY be for commission only. Yes, I know it's hard to determine this. And I know 90% of sites out there want to make money, but it's Google's world and you have to follow their rules if you want to get traffic from them.

Build quality sites. That's it.

And if you get caught, you fix them up and do what I told the OP to do to try to get them back.

EDIT: One more thing...you can still easily make money with Amazon, just to answer some of the 'panic' in this thread. Just beef up your sites! Don't include all review articles. Put in some articles that aren't reviewing a product. Don't use like 5+ affiliate links in your article. I would use 2 at the most. Will you get less click-thru's? YES. Will you have a better chance of passing a manual review? YES. Will your sites bring more value to the visitor, and last longer? YES.

Google is using the term "doorway page" for penalizing sites. If your site is seen as a doorway page, you get the boot. A doorway page is considered any page that makes it obvious that it only exists to get the visitor another page to buy something. No offense to the OP, but his site and sites like Jan's example are prime examples of this. They work, and you can get them up quickly, and you can rank them, but be careful if you do this!

IMO the better way is bigger, more authoritative and quality sites. Add outbound links that don't go to Amazon. Add videos. Have the BEST review on teh product that you can find on the interwebz. I know it's more work, but no one says IM is easy (except for MMO product creators of course) Make it a page that you would send a friend to if they want information on a product.

Maybe I missed it on your site but it seems your privacy policy isn't in complete accordance to Amazon. If you look at the Associates Program Operating Agreement point #10, you'll read:
And if you use the product advertising API, check out that license agreement, #4.q:
Now, I doubt Google de-indexed you because of this but if you're making more sites in the future, make sure your policies are compliant to Amazon as well, cause you never know.

Skip this post if you have these things on your website and I didn't see them ;P

[DELETED]

@nero- ah, thanks for that point. I missed it.

@cool hand- I did follow Jan's spec on this site. I even originally had the original theme that he suggested us using. When I found this new theme several months ago I switched this site over because I really liked it. That's why there are 301 redirects on this site, because this new theme makes you use "/reviews" in the URL. Then as far as I know Jan also started using this theme and now I believe recommends it. (although I'm not sure about this part).

Thanks Cool Hand Luke & Bill_Z, both your comments are very helpful.

What's a good free alternative to Google Analytics?

I would say the "spun articles", low amount of pages, not cloaking your affiliate links and hidden links are the main problems. Also, did you link to sub-pages as well or just the homepage? Linking only to the homepage is not natural.

You could ask for a re-inclusion request, and hopefully ask what it is you've done wrong, someone might reply with info pertaining to that

Can people please stop spouting out BS like "you don't have enough pages combined with too many affiliate links". Do you guys know how much of the internet is made up of 1 page sales sites and 1 page legitimate business pages. If Google started deindexing every site that only had a few pages and lots of sales links then half the internet would be gone.

@dp40- so what do you think the problem is

@bill_z- I had reveiws originally posted as domain/pilates-machines after I changed the theme I had to change the url to domain/reviews/pilates-machines (just an example) so I had to use 301 redirects for all the links going to the old pages. This was several months ago so I don't think this had anything to do with it. Plus I only had to do that on a couple of sites.

First check your webmasters tools and see what's the problem. Your site didn't seem professionally SEO so if you used the same keyword strategy for all, plus out sourced your backlinks by the same company that's a serious problem.

@athenistic- not sure what you mean....your saying because the affiliate links are do follow that is a problem? Or this "I've seen entire sites go down because I've had a single affiliate link with no nofollow tag."?

@expert I wasn't using webmasters tools before, but I added two of the sites in after someone suggested the same and no messages or errors.

I was the professional SEO ...by that I mean I didn't pay anyone else to do links etc, other than my VA who used SENUKE, ALN, and BMR (for a couple of months) all under my direction

@dp40 nothing to hide and that's the whole story, that's why I outed one of my sites that has been a steady earner for me

Come on , let's be realistic here. Google will only ever de-index a site or group of sites if they were in serious breach of their guidelines. Duplicate content is highly unlikely to cause a site, or group of sites, to be de-indexed.

Whatever the problem was there was obviously a factor that was apparent across all of the affected websites. Just because you own ONE website that goes against their guidelines it doesn't mean that they'll come at you all guns blazing and decide to de-index all of your sites, just because one of them were dodgey.

I strongly suggest you review your practices and websites to ensure they're compliant. Google didn't de-index you for fun, they did it to ensure the quality and integrity of their results.

I'm also very surprised at one of the replies in this thread from people who, sadly, don't really have a clue as to what they're talking about. It's amazing that people would think that because an affiliate link is dofollow, that it would affect rankings and/or the indexation of a site - this is insane.

One of my site got "de-Indexed" all of a sudden by google. Going from the first, second and third pages, to the last page overnight. Literally, Every one of the 23 pages were on the last page. I still had some traffic from bings and aol and stuff, but no google.

I stopped backlinking and waited. Close to two months have passed and a couple of days ago, I started to see google links. I checked the site and most of my keywords are on the first page now. (most of them) while before they were mostly on the second and third page.

I am not sure if the issues are the same with yours, but it's possible.

The site don't really gets de-indexed, because if you type in your domain name I am sure it'll come up. You had paid for the domain name and it'll display when you type it in.

So, what if we have all of our sites in GA and Webmaster tools? But we remove them all right now? Do you think the footprint will still exist in the future?

@bob nah, my affiliate links use a different code for each site so I can track them. No the backlinks I built used varied anchor text

@kiss no the sites weren't all backlinked to each other. I may of had one or two sites that had a one way link to another site within an article but no more than that.

So much misinformation in this thread, it's comical, lol.

OP, do not waste another second thinking about those sites, they are dead, leave them be and build new sites. You are wasting time, however three quick suggestions when building new sites:

1. Avoid hyphens as much as possible, example Google prefers: buynewsunglasses.com or buynewsunglassesv instead of buy-new-sunglasses.com.

2. Do NOT use Google Analytics

3. Do NOT build only sites around Amazon, diversify.

( If you don't want to start from scratch, just buy aged domains and start from there since they already have age and trust, and even backlinks. )

Something isn't right about this.

The site in OP is still in the Index only the IP is showing up instead of the domain name in Google SERPs.


"home studio or you’ve just decided to incorporate Pilates into your lifestyle" - Google Search

The date on the SERP is 11/25/2011. The date on the OP is 12/14/2011.

Did I miss something in this thread?

It's starting to look like a hosting/webmaster problem to me.