Its OK mate- I am not offended.
I just thought you were trying to make a
"noob" out of me. Sorry for misunderstanding.
Let me tell you my experience about Google Penalization and my penalized directory.
I bought a domain in March-2007 and installed a script on the third week. I finished categorization on 28th March. I build some links that I know for 2 days and the PR update was on 28th April-2007. My directory became PR6 home-page and most internal pages PR4.
Within this time - I didn't care much-- but as it got PR6 with good inner-page PRs, I bought custom templates/mods et. and tried to monetize it selling PR pages.
In between I rented 3 PR7 links and one PR8 links (strong as it was from a blog with very few OBL) for fear of loosing PR the next time PR was updated. My ranking shoot up like hell. I was ranking on 1st page for a fraction of my keywords. I bought the PR8 link for $300/m using TLA.
On 28th August, 1 recieved 347 visitors from Google search ( was using Google Analytics to track). The next day my directory was gone from Google SERP. ( not ranking even for "
yourdomain" ) . Finally I found it @ position #57. Since than the penalization started. Still it was generating $1K+ rvenue per month.
But I knew there was big problem as I was loosing around 150 indexed pages from Google per day. Finally, my indexed pages were settled @ 128 out of 3500+.
In between I discarded all paid links (rented) -- and only kept one 8 years old PR7 link that deals exclusively with directories. PR update happened on 27th Oct and my site's homepage remained PR6 but 99.99 categories lost PR. ( I only had PR o 128 pages which were found by G bots as they were indexed).
During the january update - my homepage too became PR0 - and all other pages PR N/A. I started my revival campaign since than as ideally my directory should have been still PR4 with all the quality backlinks it has. But as it was not the case- I figured -everything was being done by humans ( something happened with Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ that many people --even in our industry don't know).
After all my efforts, my directory now ( at the time of writing this post) has
2,790 indexed pages ( Google webmaster tools reads - Sitemap statistics:
Total URLs: 3857
Indexed URLs: 2821)
though its ranking has not yet come back.
I reckon -you have read how Jeff's Aviva has come back from Google penalty. I am hoping mine too comes back soon as I see good indications.
Regarding achieving PR for a site- I think a high quality PR7 link is enough to give you a PR6 as stated. If you want proof- I can still give you examples of how 2 penalized directories are still PR6 home-page and how other non penalized PR6 directories are riding on a single high-quality PR7 links.
But as John Scott says-- High PR is dangerous. So I think PR4 is Good, PR5 is excellent in today's world.
I hope now you understand why I reacted that way to your comments.