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thanks alot - the issue is now solved so everything is back faster and better than ever.

HI Federico Thanks for that. No I dont buy links and dont have a backlinks strategy. Everything should be natural. Having said that I dont check to see if there are any spammy links linking to me either. I have no manual actions and never have....at the moment im nofollowing more outbound links, deleting signature links from legitimate forums im on (there only a few) and clearing up spammy <alt tags="">which were basically the product of laziness as i have 8 - 10 similar images per post (paintings, photos, illustrations - hard to distinguish)</alt> Any more advice welcome...

Alot of the online community weren't sure if it was an unpdate - it was a sneaky one if it was. Either way im continuing to provide good original content 4 times a day but am also undoing and cleaning alot of careless over optimization mistakes such as too many similar <alt tags="">mor no following of outbound links, deleting signatures inks in forums (even though theyre totally legitimate) an adding some speed. Having said all that im stumped as to why i got penalised. Im an arts site, I show paintings and photographs. There are no adverts. My bounce rate is negligible, I have a 3.5 pages/visitor page view, i dont have a backlink strategy, my content is orginal, etc, etc.....very frustrating... </alt> Worst thing about this is that I still dont know why it happened so I can't get to the root of the problem. I hope you're right and things get better. Is there any average length of time before things get back to normal if you've improved things? Any helpful, solid, uplifting advice is welcome