Why is ooshirts.com not being penalized for exact match keywords?

[bradwayland]

Clearly this site is buying links.  They have the most exact match link profile I have ever seen.  It appears their strategy has been to buy links for their domain as a way to mask all the other exact match purchases they are making.  I have also been sent copies of the emails where they are attempting to purchase links.  Thoughts?

[MarieHaynes]

It looks like this site has a lot of backlinks for "custom t shirts" and I see them at #8 on Google.com for this term.  You'd think they would have been affected by Penguin.

Here's my theory.  According to ahrefs they really started a linkbuilding campaign in September of this year. Now, Penguin refreshed on October 5th.  It's possible that at that time they didn't have enough exact match anchor links to trigger the filter.  (We're assuming that this is the major component to Penguin).

My guess is that they'll decline with the next Penguin refresh.

Now, Penguin doesn't necessarily pick up paid links, just unnatural linking patterns like gross overuse of anchor text. In many cases, to be busted for paid links a manual spam review would have to be filed.  Personally I would not file a spam report though.  I think what goes around comes around.  I'd spend the time working on my own site and see what happens with the next Penguin refresh.