Personally haven't been hit by this one yet (minus one small blog). But have had Google smack down a quality handwritten site before which never recovered, so I feel the pain. That site was my pride and joy...but it got knocked out after some scraper posted thousands of off-topic anchor text links to me all over various spammy sites. That happened years ago, but the usual cadre of Google worshipers were still bahhing about how Google would never do such a thing.
For those who still think that just playing by the rules, and creating quality original content will keep your sites safe, I ask what you will do when an external "over-optimization" penalty comes knocking at your door? File a re-inclusion request?
Google has finally admitted that other webmasters are "able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index."
http://support.google.com/webmasters...n&answer=34449
Quote:
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Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages.
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Did you get that first sentence?