Recent Forum Ranking Troubles

Hey guys, I'm investigating a recent bad case of Google ranking troubles that appears to be affecting specifically forums / online communities / discussions type sites or maybe even blogs with a lot of comments. Basically, any site that may have a lot of legitimate, not spambot-submitted, user-generated content.

I don't have enough confidence to call it a penalty just yet, so I'll call it "ranking trouble".

I am looking for examples of URLs and possibly several phrases that used to rank and now don't. I guarantee confidentiality and sharing the findings with you.

So, if you have

1. site with lots of legitimate user-submitted content as in a forum or busy blog
2. you are seeing approx. 90% drop in Google referrals since early-mid March 2010
3. some random keywords sill rank on Page 1 (long tail or short) but vast majority do not.
4. site still ranks as it should on its own name
5. Googlebot is active on your site as usual or even better

I would very much like to hear from you. Please chime in here (don't post URLs here) and send the URL(s) to me via PM

 

Well, since the latest Google update, some websites have lost rankings and traffic but you are talking about 90% which might be rare for the established portals with lots of links.

 

Thanks, bermuda.

Yes, I do realize that 90% loss of traffic is usually called penalty and is rare for an established site. But, unfortunately, I do have some examples and I know other people that do, too. This is not a penalty I know of as yet so I don't want to call it that. I guess at this point I'm just looking for more data in hopes to pick up on any common traits the troubled sites may have.