“Looks like you were in digital co-op network or another similar link exchange?”

I’ve used Co-Op before experimenting with it but it’s been over a year since I actively ran it on my site. If it was flagged manually for it that’s pretty lame in my opinion considering the amount of links that my competitors sell on their sites and seem to have no problem getting ranked within Google. If it wasn’t flagged manually and is part of your algorithm then it should have become known sometime ago that they had been removed and not be an issue right now.

“In addition, at the beginning of 2007 it looks like mustangevolution was selling links, e.g. “Static Link Package:Run of Content Site, Non-Exclusive, Does not appear on forum, 5 total links]”

Yes I am selling links. So are my competitors. I’ll be glad to give you all their urls so that you can properly ban them completely from Google’s search index. Not trying to be rude but it’s really frustrating to see my competitors getting away with selling links.

http://www.mustangforums.com sells links above the fold with no nofollow tag. Blatantly disregarding Google’s guidelines on selling links. However when you type in Mustang Forums in google guess which site is the first to appear with Site Links?

It’s double standards like these that lead people like Aaron Wall to write the things that he does about Google. It’s frustrating from a webmasters standpoint the double standards involved. Google looks blindly at some sites while punishing others. Most of the time the ones that get punished are the small sites and the ones that escape are the larger ones that make Google good money.

When MustangForums (and the rest of my competitors who sell links for PR) are penalized for selling links and/or I am removed from this black hole I am in within Google I’ll have more faith in what Google hopes to accomplish as a search engine, which is quality search results.

I will take your advice however and submit the reinclusion request since I no longer use Digital Co-op or sell links for Pagerank. All I ask is that you look at what you are telling me and ask yourself why my competitors are allowed to get away with selling links, on a much more massive scale, and are not being punished within Google’s SERPs.

* Flat Rate 6 Month contract: $100.00 Per Link
* Flat Rate 12 Month contract: $175.00 Per Link
”

That sort of link selling or excessive link exchanging can affect a site’s reputation, according to
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

If you are no longer participating in the link exchanges, and you’re not selling links that pass PageRank, then I’d submit a reconsideration request: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843

Hope that helps,
Matt Cutts