Sorry if I wasn’t clear. In the reconsideration request I mentioned that I was not selling links anymore and I was not using Digital Point Co Op. I did this a couple of times over the year that I stopped doing both. Nothing improved on my site even though I was legitimate so I was getting discouraged and didn’t know what else I could do to get this fixed. It seems no matter what I tried nothing worked with Google.

I agree that I have a ways to go to compete with the large sites. It’s hard to compete in SERPs with a site that has my targeted keyword in their URL (MustangForums) and has been bought out by Internet Brands on top of that. After this month I will be interested to see how I compare with them on Compete considering how well I have done this month.

I don’t believe I am missing out on that many links because of the ads. I guess I’ll just have to disagree with you on that. Thanks for the feedback you’ve given me and I apologize if I wasn’t as clear as I should have been.

And you might do ok as is, but others in the same market are getting about 10x the traffic per Compete.com, and that was even with all your viral marketing success so it seems there is still room for improvement. Hopefully the Google fix helps you close the gap a bit, but you can’t be certain on what links you are missing out on due to your ad placement because it is a hidden cost. You might be getting 5 or 10 good links when a story goes viral when you could be getting 20 or 30, etc.

My user’s LIKE my ads, but it gives them suggestions/ideas for places to buy the parts they are looking for to complete/fix their modifications to their vehicles.

It’s the same reason why I don’t disable them for admin. I like to look at them to see what’s out there in the market too. Too bad I can’t click on them :D