It's interesting. I've had a friend drop from the rankings and the only thing he is doing wrong I can find is selling a few links. These were listed under "Featured Sites". Some of the sites looked a little shady in the amount of links that had been accrued.

 It seems Google is cracking down on those sites where links are being sold. Not sure how they found out but they are actively dropping sites as we speak.

I have another friend who wasn't even selling links, but came up with a good viral marketing idea and has been hammered for it.

I can only hope this is just a major bug in Google's algorithms that it gives a massive penalty if you happen to hit a home run with your viral content.

I still gain links daily for my list of Dofollow plugins, and Google for some reason looks on that as unnatural linking and drops me down a little in the rankings.

You, I have difficulty accepting that Google will prevent a site ranking for it's own name just for selling links. My first suggestion would be that he's gone and got himself sandboxed. Is the domain releatively young yet getting quite a lot of links? That's quite common. The suggestion about of a viral marketing causing it elsewhere fits nicely with that.

At Threadwatch we commonly saw people screaming blue murder over a supposed "mnual penalty" when it turned out just to be an algo issue. Suggestion, therefore, is consider an automated issue before manual. 2c.

iBrian I believe Tims' domain has been up at number 1 or 2 for a while now like since december last year his actions to get him there are well documented on his blogs. Its sad if it is a penalty as Tim is perhaps one of the most honest people out there he openly admitted selling links but he never gave examples it would be really sad if as speculated elsewhere that it was a personal vendetta that caused the penalty from him being "dobbed in" to get back at him for some wrong.

Was that post on timnash.me.uk I couldn't see it?

I saw his paid link saga one which points to two other articles not on that domain that talk about how he sells links but I don't think it mentions which domains he does it on? Why penalise him on his personal domain why not go for the directories he owns/owned or his work sites

I think Google should re-think its stance on paid links.  If you make people feel demonized for purchasing relevant links in our "free-market" economy you will just end of with ever more clever and pervasive spam throughout the internet.  Purchasing paid links took alot spam out of the system.  I have noticed on one of my blogs I have had since Jan 2005 the spam has been reduced greatly over the last two years.  People are now just emailing about buying ad space on my blog.  What I think this comes down to in the end as always is "control".  Google does not dominate the link purchasing and selling market so it see it as a threat to there Adwords system.  Agree or Not?

.02

-Dal 

Andy, Lyndon,

I'm about to publish an article about my own Google penalty, where I thank you both for helping me out. I wish I knew more about the Google terms of service, or at least received a warning before action was taken.