I have been building links steadily and moving up in SERP. Then I saw this site, that list bunch of text link ads site that gives out free solo ads. Initially, I just signed up for the free solo ads. Then I saw all those free text links, I I figured, why not? So I signed up for like 160 sites, posted about 5 text links each with my text link. Now I am getting murdered in SERP for my keywords on yesterday's SERP update. http://promocodes-r-us.com/programs.php?s=170&PHPSESSID=4a44d77a407176d20d15d6845ddf46bb Is this a coincident? I realize Google punish people for paid links, but I didn't pay anything for them. Are those text link ads site considered bad neighborhood or link farms? I have bad feeling about this. I am still reading up on it. I thought external links have no effect on SERP as long as you don't link back to them. Otherwise, people can spam literally tens of thousands of links to their competitors and get them completely off the search ranking.
My understanding of the paid link attitude from Google is that the algorithm itself doesn't punish paid links. None of it is automated. That said, a competitor who doesn't like you reports you, then Google may make a manual review and ban you. Check if your' site is still indexed. If it is, you probably aren't getting punished for it. Also, if you are serious about paid links, make sure you get a whole bunch of crap directory links first. That'll hide the paid links afterwards, although I suggest that you're way behind that stage.
My site is indexed. Page rank 3, most of it from directories submissions, and article submissions. I have not buy any single link from anyone. Those text link ads exchange are like traffic exchange where people click on links displayed on the site, to earn credit, in which they can use the credit to get link displayed on the exchange site or solo ads. I signed up mainly for the free solo ads benefit. But have started post text links on them too. I never paid for those, I got them for free purely for the purpose of traffic generation from member clicking on the link. Most of them don't even have page rank, and hardly any traffic compare to my site, so SEO wise, those links are useless. What could cause a -20 to completely removal from indice on keywords? That is what I'd like to know.
Google hates for websites to be involved in any automated systems whose only purpose is to improve PR and rankings. As a test, maybe you should try getting links to your competitors from that system. It might be that those links triggered a manual review at which time they decided that either your website or your link profile was too spammy. Really you shouldn't expect decent Google rankings based mainly on directory links and article directory links. You need quality links to rank well on Google.