True, G&C is an authority site. It got to be that way because of daily updates and additions for several years. Google likes to see slow and constant growth IMO.
Authority sites appear to work the opposite way from smaller ones. Additions/changes pop to the top right away and then start losing positions as time passes without updates to that page/section/keyword listing. So they become a nightmare of constantly needed changes to more and more pages or they drop.
It becomes so daunting that one has to keep adding paid labor to keep up with it all. So increased income gets eaten up by increased expenses and you end up running a full fledged business with all the headaches of managing product and people. The process is riddled with growing pains, the need for more money to pay more people to update more pages and sections. I have worked for 10 to 13 hours a day 7 days a week for years to keep up with it all. It’s not for the faint hearted and you do need a business background to manage continued growth large enough to make you an authority site.
But you don’t have to go to that extreme, IMO you can make a good living with non authority sites that stick to the growth principle but at a lesser rate.
I didn’t link to a banned site. I only list casinos on my front pages. Link partners have their own internal directory on the site
It doesn’t matter where your link partners are located. If you draw attention with a change anyplace on the site all of the site gets reevaluated and items that google let slide a month ago can flag your site today. Do you check the legitimacy of your link partners more often than google does? I think that is where the problem lies.
Any type of SEO tricks are disliked by google. Sooner or later they all come back to bite you. IMO, if you want the site to continue to rank in the long run, you need to be squeaky clean. Otherwise you have “disposable sites” aka blackhat. The grey area of SEO lasts longer than the black one, sometimes much longer, but it will get you eventually.
So maybe the problem is the occasional update of sites that don’t receive many google bot visits? Suddenly drawing the attention after periods of dormancy?
Re-examine your SEO. Do you keep within the parameters set by the google webmaster guidelines? Is there some old SEO stuff on your site that has come back to bite you? Be especially attentive to links, I think google has started to crack down on inflated link counts.
I just updated some small sites that have been neglected for years and will keep an eye.
I know it is hard to become established when squeaky clean. I took the long route, spending years and all the income generated to continue to grow the site slowly and consistently, and it paid off.
Just my personal experience, I don’t even keep up with any SEO matters except for the google guidelines. Many will disagree with my approach.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
:hattip: