webnewton - 10:06 am on Mar 4, 2005 (gmt 0)

Google has indeed put a check on the unnatural paid links obtained by SEO's to manupulate SERPS. In response to my inquiry about one of my site's penalisation Google sighted

obtaining paid links from high PR pages

as one of the possible reasons for penalty. I believe this is what hit my site. However with more research i was able to find out that if your paid links are from relavent sites then your site is safe.