fathom - 5:27 pm on Feb 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

Is that what you did then?

I am generally quite a #*$!y guy when I am extremely confident on the topic.

And you learned that the algo penguin basically disavows the links it doesn't like for you and you add links back to counteract? Why have more people recovered from it then? All links that I have added since Penguin have had no effect whatsoever.

Googlers give more than enough hints... some are even off-topic but are surprisingly enlightening just the same. The best example for me was this:

Since you all are speculating that Google doesn't mean what it says, it seems a bit fruitless for me to post here, but anyway ... :-) The information on [support.google.com...] is still valid. Using the rel=nofollow microformat prevents PageRank from passing. It's useful for potentially untrusted links (eg in UGC), it's useful for advertising, and to some extent, for crawl prioritization. There are some good examples listed in this thread - such as event sponsors, etc.. They aren't taken into account when we review sites with regard to paid links or other link schemes, nor are they used for things like authorship. We generally still show them in Webmaster Tools though, since these links may be bringing users to your site. If you're seeing issues with your site with regards to paid links, link schemes, or similarly, then apart from just removing those links (if they're just embarrassing), you could add the rel=nofollow instead, especially if you feel that these links have been useful in driving users to your site. Does that help? Anything missing? Cheers John

I swear on reading that one day it occurred to me that sums up PENGUIN determining the difference between an organic and inorganic link... who is the benefactor?

An organic benefits the patrons of the domain the link resides on.

An inorganic link isn't meant to benefit the patrons of the domain the link resides on it is meant to benefit the owner of the 'link to' domain and the difference defines what PENGUIN does (just like you using the nofollow attribute).

I've put that assumption to the test - many times.

I'm no expert on your domain but if you got PENGUINized for keywordy phrases stop using keywordy phrases.