errorsamac - 8:21 pm on Apr 29, 2007 (gmt 0)

Just to update on my testing and a back story on the site I am testing with:

I took a domain that really did not get any links at all and I began building it up. First, I obtained 300-400 links on link directory sites using identical anchor text.

Two weeks later, I obtained a good number (80-100) links using similar but different anchor text. At this point, I noticed that my site which did rank on page 1 for a few terms, moved to page 2.

After 1 week, the site almost recovered it's original ranking. I then purchased 1 off-topic PR7 link to the site using the same anchor text as the first 300-400 links that I received. The page almost immediately saw the -950 penalty.

Once hit with the penalty, I changed the off-topic PR7 link to point to a competitor. It has only been a few days but so far my site has not recovered and my competitor did NOT drop.

From this, I believe that to get in to this penalty, you need to obtain 400+ links in a short period of time (1 month?) with similar anchor text. Once you see some downward movement, you can then get an off-topic high PR link pointed at the site and that should be the final push to -950 land.

I have another site that jumped to -950 land by receiving many (400+) links using similar anchor text within a short period of time (again, around 1 month). The number of links to trip the filter is probably based off some sort of percentage (for example, typically you get 10 new backlinks a month, but all of the sudden you received 40x that all using the same anchor text).

I am now testing a method of recovery on the first site that I mentioned. I'll update if I get any results.