Well, I am just wondering since Google put a big red X on most of my sites PR / ranking, is there a hope it may improve one day (they can't really know if i continue to buy / sell links, and i doubt they actually check case by case)?
From everything I have seen, it takes some cleaning up/reinclusion request before a slapped site returns to adequate rankings. By adequate, I mean ranking in the top 50. Some of the penalties are algo while others are manual. Unless the paid links get cleaned up, it's very likely you will remain penalized even if you try to build backlinks to get out of the hole. To clean up the site and prepare for a reinclusion request, most try to get paid backlinks removed. If nothing else, this will show some effort. Now I've heard people that actually gave G a list of paid links they had removed, which by the way identifies those sites selling links. Honestly, if your sites are valuable enough to salvage from being slapped why risk it any further? If G removes the penalty on your sites, they will likely be under a microscope for a while. Others just start fresh with a new domain, but they probably did not invest as much as you have in link building. I'm sure you read the info in Matt Cutt's blog, but I'll post the info here for other readers. About Paid Links http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ About Reinclusion Requests http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/
It amazes me that Google is doing this to websites that they make money from. They act like they have the only search engine in the world.
Actually I feel it is fairly easy for your competitor to get your website removed /deindexed from Google. Most of my larger / popular sites do not rank for even site name, but have no problem for my other low profile websites.