Double crossing link partner and webmaster guidline violation

[Asia_Expat]

I had an agreement to display a banner for a webmaster friend of mine, who also participates in my forum. This had been the case for a year or so.
That is until I made some forum posts that he passionately disagreed with. As far as I am concerned, I am entitled to my opinions and he should be man enough to rebuttal with his own opinions and leave it at that. However, I just noticed that his banner on my site (served from his own server) had been replaced with a blank image, perfectly matched to the background colour, hence effectively it is a hidden link, therefore violation of Google guidelines... and I suspect he did this out of malice and has reported it to Google, or similar.

Naturally, I pulled the code without delay but I'm now deeply concerned that everything is the cache is evidence of this and it could cause me a serious problem soon.

Can this hurt my website, which has just recently started getting good traffic after years of effort?

[edited by: Asia_Expat at 11:19 am (utc) on Sep. 12, 2007]

[Asia_Expat]

... the link had the nofollow attribute on it BTW

[caveman]

I would not worry about it. Far worse things go on every day and don't get picked up. Obviously if it's a graphical ad, the SE's have no way of detecting that it matches the color of your site. So for it to even be an issue, it would have to be reported. Plus we're talking only about one strange ad here, not a sitewide pattern of abuse, so I doubt a SE rep would take any significant action.

Addtionally, while I personally view the nofollow attribute as weak-minded and manipulative way for SE's to make up for poor algorithmic assessment capabilities, in this case, nofollow would have provided you with cover. You can't be hurt for something you've clearly told them to ignore.

[Asia_Expat]

Thanks for your comments caveman... I feel a little more relaxed now.