Panda killed rankings for a lot of my personal sites that I don't update often, but still have a lot of content on them (that I created, not junk). One of them

Panda killed rankings for a lot of my personal sites that I don't update often, but still have a lot of content on them (that I created, not junk). One of them seems to be actively excluded from search results now. As an example of the ridiculousness of the new algo, try searching for "shopsquad" (a friend of a friend's startup). The official site had to purchase an ad to appear in search results. Why?