Several observations have been made:-
1. downgraded sites have keywords in the links from other sites .
2. the majority of results in Google results pages are keyword rich internal pages .
3. downgraded sites are optimised for competitive key phrases
This make sense of course as Google seems to be trying to downgrade SEO’d pages and SEO’d sites tend to have themed opening pages, themed links and are optimised for competitive terms.
Can’t do much about ezifriend’s links at the moment as a number of dating directories have linked to us with our old page title that includes “Australian Personals” in it. Our Australian Dating Guide site has taken a hit too on the phrase “Australian Dating” – but as you can see from the link, I’m experimenting with ways of knocking keywords out of link text.