Just wanted to point out a few tidbits of info that Adam Lasnik (Googler) says in a WMW thread (msg # 3146826). See the post for full comments...just supplying some tidbits here.
Regarding reinclusion requests... if you feel that your site has been penalized (not just naturally re-ranked due to ongoing algorithm changes) due to something you've done on the site *OR* something that was done before you took ownership of the domain, then by all means, file a reinclusion request. It can't hurt, and it may help.
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I think it'd be a rare occurrence to see rankings or penalties lasting for years.
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There are many reasons why we focus on sites rather than pages in this context, including:
- It sends a more clear signal to Webmasters so that violations typically get fixed ASAP.
- It prevents Google users from seeing a domain rank highly, despite spammy practices on many pages.
- It makes it harder for Webspammers to experiment with thresholds ("Let me try keyword stuffing and nasty redirects on THESE pages... and keep these other pages as the control group and let's see how Google treats the individual pages...")
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A site that's buying links on high-PR sites with *clearly* no interest in or reasonable expectation of actual traffic... it does set off alarm bells.
