holzeee - 7:07 pm on May 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

If suspect backlinks are one of the main causes of sites getting ranking penalties then it would be very easy for anyone to nobble their competition, this may be a contributing factor but there are probably a lot of other contributing factors, i agree with the other post about waiting until the dust settles, i'm also following the antitrust investigation of Google "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/google-confirms-ftc-antitrust-investigation_n_883951.htmlwhich is currently underway"