Does Google punish/restrict us for having multiple affiliate sites?

I've created a lot of affiliate sites over the course of time. I've noticed something weird happening.

The first 2-3 affiliate sites I made ranked well, and pretty easy. But when I made more sites, I noticed they weren't ranking at all, or ranking much poorly. The content style/quality/SEO was even better, so it can't be because of that.

Could it be that Google noticed I'm making a lot of random niche/affiliate sites, so it restricted me? And can I try to bypass that with an IP address change and hosting account change? And how can I cloak myself better?

I would like to know the same thing...

Who knows the mind of Google and what goes on behind the scenes we don't know about. It's always possible they do this. They hate SEO's and affiliate marketers. If you;re worried about it get domain privacy, use a different host for each site, and don't hook them up to webmaster tools or analytics.

No, they don't hate people with 100s of sites except you don't spam the serps. To be safe get privacy for the domains and it is free with many registrars.

Are you adding all these sites under the same Google account on webmaster tools, analytics and such? If you are, they might have a manual look at your sites in a batch and decide whether you're spamming or creating something worth it.