smithaa02 - 6:36 pm on Jun 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

It could be that google has lots of algorithms running at the same time...and that their right hand doesn't know what their left hand is doing.

Sure...Cutts may infer that cleaning up your webspam will help your rankings, but another algorithm probably monitors statistical anomalies in your link acquisition and/or attrition rates...and adjusts your rankings accordingly to compensate for what they deem is unnatural.

Has anybody else removed a lot of spam links and noticed any changes for positive or worse?