I have recently bought a competing website (hxxp://www.onlinecricketbetting.org). I have the same website already at hxxp://www.onlinecricketbetting.net. Both were started at the same time I guess, and we were both at page 1, he usually above me. I haven't done much to my site, updating it very rarely, just pointing a few low quality links like blog commenting, ezine articles, etc. and I ranked for the EMD atleast. About last year the .org site dropped from the first page, and I decided to buy it. Now, my .net site is doing a lot better, and gets some visits from google, but the .org is struggling. It does not receive any, and only rank for a few terms, for example, for the EMD (online cricket betting), the webpage /paddy-power/ ranks higher than the main site. Does this mean my site has been slapped or penalized or something? What can I do about this? I have started working on getting some good links to it and updating it with content, but it doesnt seem to help. Now in the webmaster tools, all my links have been removed aswell (I can find them in ahrefs.com though). Any thoughts?
Well it seems as though the Google updates have affected the site's rankings. You said you just started to get some good links and updating it with content. You won't see changes right away. The best thing to do is to keep on building links and posting good quality content and there should be no reason for it not to be ranked.