Page Rank halved - traffic doubled

[cabbie]

I have a content rich website that has been pr6 for years now.
I have always sold in content links on it, I make no apologies for that.They are suited to my website and have increased the revenue for it many fold.
With one of the recent Panda or Penguin updates, I noticed traffic and some serps were supressed.
I put this down to a recent sold link to a spammy area(think payloans).
Now, I have just noticed a surge in traffic and appearing for kws I haven't before and thinking this is great.However, I just discovered the page rank for my site is now 3.I still see strong links to my site.

Is google now penalising suspected link sellers with page rank penalties? But at the same time allowing the site to be unaffected in the serps?
This definitely cuts down on my sites attractiveness to link buyers but at the same time keeps my unique content available to google visitors.

[tedster]

This definitely cuts down on my sites attractiveness to link buyers but at the same time keeps my unique content available to google visitors.

That's what these "toolbar only" penalties seem to be designed for. I've been seeing effects like this for a year or two, in various cases. In fact, I sometimes think these toolbar demotions are more common than full-blown ranking penalties when it comes to link selling.