Way back to 2003/4 when PR first came in. How many affiliates used sites like LinksManager to manipulate their serps. We all did it to varying degrees. Why? Because it worked!
As long as their alog rewards external linking, people are going to continue to game the system.
Panda, Penguin, Starfish, Elephant etc etc calling it silly names doesn’t seem to do anything except penalise webmaster playing by the Google Rules. The grey/black hatters which Cutts keeps saying these updates target, do nothing to curb this epidemic.
Until Google seriously rethink their alog and stop rewarding throw away-domains and hacked sites, Google will continue to be part of the problem not the solution.
Besides, there’s be talk for a while the reason this crap is still in the organic searches is to force serious webmasters into purchasing Ad Words and such from Google. Any truth to that rumour?
Index spam certainly isn’t getting less, is it!