#1 in Google image and #420 in Google search

[Ecaterina]

It is a case of a site that was in top 10 for quite a while, but "helped" with links from forums/blogs/link farms, so wend down to #100. This is the moment I accepted, about 16-18 months ago, to take over this site and to try to do my best to have it back in first pages in G.
I've "clean up" a little bit the links, removing as many as possible, infusing new, most valuable links. I replaced the old/duplicate content with new, original content. I did re-write the code make it even more SEO friendly (code wasn't bad from the first place).

What I have now (for targeted keywords):
#1:#3 position in MSN for more then 10 months
#5-#11 in Yahoo during the last 12 months
#1-#4 in Baidu, #2-#9 in Voila, so on

Anyway, in Google it seems that I "managed" to move the site from #100 to an average of #160, and during the last week I noticed my "best" performance: #420.
On the other hand, I did managed to rank #1 or first page in Google Images for targeted keywords! unfortunately G. Image traffic doesn't help much.

What I intend to do is to ask Google for reinclusion, but the owner disagree, considering that this move can only harm.

Please add your comments/suggestions for best to be done now.
It seems I completely lost my skills in dealing with Google :)

Thanks

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

What I intend to do is to ask Google for reinclusion

You are not excluded, you are just not ranking well, so asking for "reinclusion" will not help. If you are lucky all you will get is a standard letter telling you this.

The fact that you are featuring in image searches may be an indicator that the site will improve in the next few weeks or months. If you are sure that it is clean I would wait a bit longer.

[Ecaterina]

Thanks, BeeDeeDubbleU,

Something new I've just noticed. It is about the same site I was writing into this thread.
Google Sitemap it is displaying into "statistics" page some amazing positions: mainKeyword: Average top position 4, secondKeyword Average top position 2 and another 3 keywords ranking in first 10. Anyway, a real search is displaying more or less the same old results, even searching with various datacenters. It is true I didn't check Google sitemap from some time. Some ideas? It is possible that G. to foresee an amazing improvement in my site? It will be so nice, but I can not really think so...

[MrStitch]

Sitemaps isn't quite accurate there, and I don't know whats going on with it.

With my main keywords, it tells me that I'm averaging at #9.

But if you hit the dropdown box and select 'U.S. Google', i'll get a more accurate position..... #25

In other countries though, i'm ranking much better.

So i've been changing that selection box to see where i'm at in the serps geographically.... seems to be somewhat more accurate.