Here's the thing.
Since January one of my sites has been consistently listed on the very last page of results for one particular search term. Previously this site was in the top 10 for that term.
I've been going through my site, trying to make sure there are no spammy elements to it, and I'm fairly certain it's clean. It was pretty clean to begin with.
Still, there I am, stuck on page 9 (and sometimes booted off into the omitted results). It doesn't matter what I do, I'm still there. It's maddening.
What's more, I'm in the company of several other well known GG&J webmasters, people who I know aren't spammers. Greenie's site was there with me for a while.
This thread
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3215939.htm (yes, it's at Webmaster world, bear with me) shows a lot of other sites who have had the same thing happen, and they're not spammy sites.
Google gives no clue as to why this might have happened. I've done a bit of reading and I'm still in the dark.
I think I'm going to have to try a reinclusion request.
I guess this post is just a whinge on my part. I do my best to make clean, non-spammy sites that users will like, just like Google says we should. And then shit like this happens and I'm left wondering what the hell I did wrong. It's very, very frustrating.