So for one of my sites I hired the services of an SEO. The site is about 2 years old, had a moderate amount of backlinks, and was ranking extremely well... Come to find out the guy was using some blackhatting methods to gain massive backlinks. Come Sept 01 2009 my site dropped for everything we were ranking for... even terms we have been ranking well for over a year with almost no competition. Traffic went from 150uv a day to about 3-4... all from google maps. My Website WAS NOT deindexed. All pages are still indexed, and I can still pull up my site in google if i type in the domain name, or use site: I filed a re inclusion request. Explained the situation. Took one week and just today I got this email in webmaster tools. Should I expect the penalty to be removed and my site regain rankings anytime soon?
It sounds positive. Nothing is guaranteed with Google and re-inclusions though. I doubt anyone except Matt Cutts will be able to give you a definitive answer. Sorry man, its just a wait and see situation.
That is the generic templated email they send to everyone that files for re inclusion... I would not expect any changes anytime soon for your situation if it is a penalty of some kind.
Haven't you seen his reports/works. That's too bad for your site. You have to clean up first your site and then request for re inclusion again.
It's the dreaded sandbox effect I'm afraid, too many links too fast. Your site will recover all on its own in a couple of months. No need for a reinclusion request - this request is just for completely de-indexed sites.