@Chancey - true but John Chow did many blackhat tactics and is still completely banned from Google - if you type John Chow into google his site doesn't come up.
I have one bid directory that was a pr4 and now 0. What the crap does goog want from us? We spend money setting up a bid directory and spend $$ on advertising, hosting, domain name etc. Are we suppose to offer links for FREE or WHAT? What's the use in having a site if we they don't want us to make money? I did have 40 websites and after the last 2 years I almost gave up. I did delete some of my domains because it was easier to do so than try to sell them. I don't have the time to mess with all that. But, seriously What do some of you think about what google wants from us in order to make it in this internet game? Are we waisting our time putting up sites trying to make alittle $$? Seems to me that if you don't have pr, you don't have crap. I know pr isn't everything, the position your in on the SE's is the key. Wish I could think of a internet business to get into besides selling on ebay. One more thing, I noticed alot of the directories went down in pr also.
my page rank went up yet my overall google traffic is down! It's a sad and weird thing... I would go back to PR0 to get my 500 hits from google a day now I'm PR4 and I'm seeing 200 hits a day less!
I think Google doesn't like thousands of backlinks coming from one site anymore. So, if a site with thousands of indexed pages links to yours, let's say from their footer, it will hurt your rankings rather than making any good. You say you have 20.000 backlinks. If most of them are from different sites it's good but if all of them are only from a bunch of sites, your going to be penalized in some way. If you need PR5, just find a few PR5+ links. You don't need thousands of backlinks. If you think a site is linking to you in massive amounts, you might try contacting them to ask if they can make those links nofollow.
I used to think the same way, until I read some insightful interviews from Google employees. They aren't in the business of promoting or dismissing quality sites. What they are trying to convey is that it's your problem when traffic or PR drops- not theirs. A complicated scenario, but we don't hold the keys to the puzzle as often as one might think.