Google Evaluation of your site

[Andy]

One of the ex Google staff leaked a document that they give to students who they recruit to check sites for what they call "offensive behaviour". One of my contacts showed me the document. It mentions things like showing one set of content to the Googlebot spider and another to the user. This sort of cheating is obviously not a good idea and much of the document covers stuff that is obvious such as invisble text and redirects etc.

For me, the main thing revealed in this document that may not be so obvious to marketers was that it's very important to offer the visitor something other than rehashed content from other sites and affiliate links. One of the most difficult types of sites to not label as offensive for Google are hotel booking sites. This is because most of these sites simply trap visitors with keywords for the hotels and present them with an affiliate link. I've experienced this problem myself when searching for hotel information. It's infuriating when you keep getting affiliate sites in the way of the actual hotel's own site. The way to avoid being blacklisted in this situation is to provide  price comparisons, reviews of the hotels and visitor information etc. So your site must offer something useful that can't be got simply by going direct to the site you are promoting.

The other key thing they mention is that your site should still be a coherent whole if all the ads and affiliate links were removed. At least, words along these lines. With some sites, there would be nothing left. 

[Hope]

I can't stand hotel reseller sites. This is for two reasons. One reason is, they have no data on the hotel. They just want your money. They don't help anyone looking for hotel information, just bookings. The other reason is because my company markets the hotel's websites for them. We find it difficult sometimes to get listed because of the hundreds of thousands of resellers.

[Andy]

But there must be big money to be had in the hotel booking game 

[nvsquared]

In line with the document.  The best way to have your site listed on google is to have good original content.  Monetization should only come afterwards.  If you create a theme based niche site and promote your links then in 6 months time you should see some income coming in.