Big Drop - harmed by inbound links?

Strange links pointing to me

[needsomehelp]

Was ranking in top 5 for my terms which are very competetive. Made no changes to site, this index I dropped into the 150's for most terms.

I check my links and many old links are not being counted (these same links are being counted for other sites).

I am also seeing at least 20 domains, all owned by the same company, doing some sort of cloaking that are being returned in my link count for this site. These sites have their cache disabled and are redirecting to the mother site.
I did not think that you can be penalized for the sites that link to you but one of my competetors suffered the same drop in rankings and has these links in his link count as well.

Any input is appreciated.

[GoogleGuy]

I'd fill out a spamreport (I won't mention the url again, a few folks don't want me to repeat it over and over), and make it very clear that these spammy cloakers are linking to you and you have nuthin' to do with them.

[needsomehelp]

Would it effect my rankings having these spammy cloaker's linking to me?

[john316]

It would seem that a "gentler" approach would be to simply disregard links that you perceive to be from link farms.

Punitive stuff ain't cool.

[needsomehelp]

john 316,
Is your response directed towards me or googleguy? Do you think I should not report these cloakers? If so why?

[john316]

needsomehelp:

It was directed to gg. I don't see why a site should be penalized by who links to it, it just opens the door for all sorts of malicious behaviour on the part of unethical webmasters.

Why would you report?

[needsomehelp]

Why would I report?

Are you kidding? If the linking of these pages to me is effecting my ranking why wouldn't I report?

[rogerd]

Why would you report?

This sounds like the signature of a spam site delivering quite different content to bots - containing needssomehelp's URL, no less - than searchers, so why not do one's part to clean up SERPs?

[needsomehelp]

Would this effect my rankings?

[needsomehelp]

Anybody?

[Philosopher]

According to Google's webmaster's FAQ section and statements by Google rep's themselves, there is nothing that another site can do to have a negative affect on your site. This would include an outside site linking to your site.

However, GG's post above would seem to indicate this this may not actually be true and Google may in fact be taking into account links from less-than-ethical sites. In any event, I would definitely report this using the spam report as soon as possible.

[GoogleGuy]

I'll chime in. It shouldn't make a difference, esp. in our automatic scoring. However, if someone were doing manual spamfighting on that cloaker, there's an outside chance that the spamfighter might associate you with the cloaker. Both case are rare, and to have them both happen together are even more rare. I have seen 1-2 cases where an SEO went pretty far to try to frame someone else. It doesn't happen very often though. If you fill in a spam report, you've covered your bases. You're probably fine either way though.

[needsomehelp]

"You are probably fine either way."

Not really since my site dropped in rankings over 150 positions.

Being that the new algo was introduced last update, and it really did not effect my rankings, all I can do is wonder why it seems as though a penalty has been inflicted to my site this update since I did not change my site at all. All I did was build my link pop.

Googleguy, are there any new penalties being inforced?

[needsomehelp]

Anything GoogleGuy?