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For some reason I can't "thumb" up any comments, but these are all good answers. In Ian's case, 40 domains is a reasonable amount. Most websites will have many more than this, often in the 100's or 1000's of spammy, low-quality links that they paid for over time. Also, there's no guarantee Google will ever lift the penalty, even if you remove 100's of links and submit multiple fully documented reinclusion requests to the Google Web Spam Team. I've known SEO's that have literally sent 1000s of emails and removed 100's of links to no avail. I've also seen smaller sites remove just a handful of links and their rankings bounce right back. Here's how I would tackle the problem: 1. Do you think you can reasonably remove 60-75% of the links? Or at least have a VERY good reason why you can't? Anything beneath this level and you'll most likely be fighting an uphill battle with Google. 2. In some cases, even if you've been penalized by bad links, some of those bad links still help you - even at reduced traffic levels. So you may be penalized, but you're still seeing more traffic than you would otherwise. In a few cases it's not worth it to remove the links at all. 3. Finally, as Ian said, how many good links do you have? If the sight is truly burned, can you walk away from the good links without too much regret? If the answer is yes, it may be time to start over. There's no right answer for all circumstances, so weigh your options carefully.