Pre-existing Spam Links for Newly Purchased Domain

[thinker]

I recently purchased a new domain and launched a website.

As I was new at web development, I failed to thoroughly check the domain name history.

The home/index page has 32 duplicate inbound links from another website. The anchor keywords are similar to the keywords in my new website.

In your opinion, does google ignore the excessive spam links or does it pay attention and give a penalty?

Thank you very much for your feedback.

[tedster]

If there was a previous penalty, it might still be a flag against your newly purchased domain. I'd say set up a Webmaster Tools account and write to Google from there, explaining the situation, listing the spam links specifically, and asking Google to set everything back to zero for you. That's all you want, a fair start for your new domain.

[thinker]

Thank you tedster. I did open a Webmaster Tools account and that has been extremely helpful.

I requested reconsideration for the domain (stating the domain may have a bad history), although I didn't think about letting them know about the spam links specifically. That is sound advice.

All content is indexing and ranking well considering the age of the site, except the homepage. But I think there may be several reasons for that (1. lack of content, 2. Competitive/broad keywords, 3. Improper bolding of some phrases, or 4. Spam link penalty).

Congratulations on such a great forum. I've never seen anything like it.