Hi, the original post author here.

Hundreds of thousands of paid links? Excuse me? We do NOT pay for links. The only thing I can imagine has initiated Penguin - we sell web-software (forum software, helpdesk software etc) that has a footer link "powered by XXX". We dis see this affected our rankings a year ago and we're still trying to recover (making those links "nofollow" trying to contact the linking webmasters etc).

Sorry but I don't buy it.

You're telling me these links don't look paid to you (and this is an example of just the first page):

http://www.webhostingsearch.com/web-tools.php - Spammy footer link

http://jack-fx.com/ - Spammy blog roll links

http://www.helpdesk2000.org/ - More spammy blog links

http://www.chat-software.org/ - Spammy footer links

http://www.cloudcomputing-providers.com/ - Spam network links in blog posts

Guessing you guys will need to whip out the disavow tool to get out of this one. These are exactly the types of links that Penguin is going after - anchor text rich & not editorial.

Followup: Yeah... I even found links to my site from porn sites... Guess we have to spend weeks with the disavow tool.. In hopes that google will take te penalty down. What tool have you used to discover the backlinks? I will need it...

PS. why can't I just BE A CODER! :(

Use Google Webmaster Tools and Download the latest links file.

You can also take a look at Ahrefs, Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. All of those require a subscription though. You will most likely be fine just using link data provided from Google itself.

Did the SEO agency you hired get you those backlinks ?

Which ones? The ones above? I'm not sure. Will have to contact them and get back.

I think, the links we're being penalised for - are mostly the links that come from our software widget. Check out this page, the very-very top of it: http://algonac.thebestcityguides.com/Forum/forum4195-Minneol...

We have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS links like this (I'mm looking at my WMT right now). I guess this is the main reason. Our site is hit by Penguin...

I don't see the spammy footer link on the 1st one. The page title is "useful web tools" and we have a link in the body part... I don't understand.

Also, what makes you think a blog roll is always "spammy"? The second one seem to be a blog about ASP.NET, the author recommending our software... There are plenty of review people post about our software: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVuB3oGr5pw here's a video review of our Jitbit Crm for example...

.. but anyways, I guess you ARE right, we do have to disavow all these links and contact webmasters so they remove it. Not sure if this the seo-guys we hired who screwed us up, or the result of negative seo (unlikely, but who knows)

PS. feels kinda uncomfortable when everyone's investigating my site, my backlinks, you know my name, my blog, even my home address from whois records, but I know nothing about you. Just some "uts_" guy on HN. Justsayin... It's like you're naked on a scene, everyone sees you, but you see nothing because of the lights :((