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Also, I now show 0 backlinks, but had over 8000+ in the updates prior to this one. The Toolbar PR is white, not gray, and indicates the PR is 0. There are still 100’s of pages listed in the Google SERP, but not nearly as many as there should be, and fairly low down in the SERP.
It looks like my site was definitely penalized, and the only thing I did was add an affiliate link section to the bottom of my pages. This section included links to friends and family, as well as a few paying advertisers. Less than 20 links total. Is this bad?
Will Google really penalize my site for linking to other worth while sites? This seems like a deliberate penalty, and not a bug.
People have been selling advertising space since the web was invented. Now Google has come along and declared this a crime? I am a bit confused to how this could lead to such a severe penalty…
How can the simple text “affiliate links” cause my site to go from a PR 7 to a PR 0?
Regardless, I have since removed all external links, and all text referring to “affiliates” or “sponsors”.
Will my site bounce back from this penalty automatically in an update or two? Will I again rank for the KW terms I used to do well for, or is this site permanently hosed?
Again, this looks like a penalty and not a ban, as there are still pages in the index, but they rank really low. What does the future hold for this otherwise clean site? I certainly didn’t intend to do anything wrong. This seems like a very harsh penalty indeed.
P.S. I have emailed Google several times asking about the penalty, and ask that it be removed, but I have gotten no reply…
