Well, my site has dropped off from no2 for it's main keyword and also every other keyword - it's still indexed though. I'm hoping it's google just doing it's thing and everything will come back really quickly but this seems different to usual for some reason.
You might interesting to read some real case study instead of assumption. I found many of them but this one seems good to me. (It is not my own website of course )
Yep I agree it depneds upon the nature of the penalty. If you have been selling links you may never get re indexed in google, so it's then best to start again and build organic traffic.
First of all, why does it punish your site? if you had made a few, it is regretful. and if only it is credited to carelessness, you can call Google severs and wait the answer.
Can there be any problem due to over submission ? Because i am also suffering from the same thing, i got good ranking for all keywords in google but two days before my site is not showing ranked in google on any keyword. i checked webmaster tool and i found that back links have been increased from 500 to 4500. Can this be the problem ? can it be solved ?