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Hey, it's an interesting theory. They are certainly taking their time rolling out the new 'jolting and jarring' Penguin update so I guess we will have to just sit tight and wait and see (as ever). My take on the Disavow links tool was more that it was for those people with a manual penalty but if they are planning on really shaking things up then I guess it gives them some wiggle room if lots of people are negatively affected by the next update. I do know that link spam seems as bad as ever in some niches I monitor. Sure, they have taken some of the really aggressive anchor text abuse down, but for every site removed, a new manipulative site has appeared with a slightly different anchor text signature so this push towards relevance and quality could not be more important or timely.