Hi,
My site is http://www.catalunya.co.uk which has ranked very well for
several years but in early/mid September dropped in Google's SERPS.
After investigating I found that the highest I could rank for any term
on the site, including "www.catalunya.co.uk" was 31 and I then found a
thread about it at webmasterworld (http://www.webmasterworld.com/
google/3119215.htm) and found that the penalty seems to be fairly
common.
I didn't worry about it too much as I had planned on revising the site
extensively. The content is about Barcelona and it earns money through
a combination of direct sales, affiliate links and adsense. A big part
of this rewrite included adding more hotel details (with affiliate
links) and well as a restructure of the whole site.
The content on these pages at the time included a map of location -
each location has been checked and double checked as the GPS
coordinates supplied by hotel bookings sites proved to be terrible and
so the maps displayed an accurate position for each hotel in
Barcelona. Some of the hotels also have a completely original review,
the idea is to write a review for every hotel. And finally I added the
option for users to add feedback about hotels, thereby providing
visitors to the site with good, unique content.
I submitted a reinclusion request as suggested by Matt Cutts and
others at the end of October. Within 5 days my site had been visited
by someone from Google, but no change in the SERPS.
In January I again decided to tackle the issue head on. Some people
had suggested that hotel affiliates were the cause of the problem, so
I stripped many hotel links from the site and added some original
content to every hotel listed regarding how they were good for
sightseeing and/or business. The site now gives info on distances to
specific locations in Barcelona and advises when you should be looking
elsewhere.
I resubmitted on January 22 and on January 26 someone from Google
visited the site. To date I've seen no improvement in the SERPS and so
made more changes this week.
An example of a hotel with full review can be found at
http://www.catalunya.co.uk/barcelona/accommodation/hotel-finder/1066-...
and one without at http://www.catalunya.co.uk/barcelona/accommodation/
hotel-finder/1014-Apsis-Millenni-Hotel.php.
Now, the site is more than just a hotel site. It provides pages of
original content to help anyone visiting Barcelona. It provides
information on FC Barcelona and has online booking of tickets.
What do I need to do to get Google to remove the penalty when as far
as I can see I am complying with what they ask for in the Google
webmaster guidelines. I have spend 100s of hours on this and earning
close to zero from it, a situation I can't maintain indefinitely.
To me the site appears to have good information, original content and
it looks good. How does it appear to you?
Thank you for you time, I look forward to your comments.
regards,
David Leigh
http://www.catalunya.co.uk
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