Penalized

I got penalized by Google (I think). My website (language translation) has
been in existence for over 10 years, and all those years it has been (mainly
the home page) in the top 3-7 positions for almost all relevant search terms
one could imagine. A couple of weeks ago "that happened!". While my
website is still found in SERPs on the first page for some (less
significant) search terms, the site has evaporated from SERPs or is found on
the 7-8th page of the search results for my major, most important search
terms. The indexing or PR of my pages do not seem to be affected. (I am
still fine with Yahoo! and MSN.)



I can only suspect one reason for the penalty, and that possible reason is
totally unintentional. In the middle of January I exchanged home page links
with a major European seller of home appliances present in 26 countries.
They placed my link in their footer, and the link got duplicated in their
hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) pages. I did not ask for that. I just
got it. Five+ months later I am getting this penalty. I assume this is for
an "unnatural" jump in the number of incoming links. Plus my link to them
is not really relevant to the content of the page it's sitting on. It has
taken that long to have happened (unless the reason is something else I am
not really aware of).



I have discontinued the link on my home page and advised them appropriately.
They are still keeping my link(s), though.



Now is the question: What shall I do?



Shall I sit and wait for months until Google reverts the situation, if they
indeed do that? What can I do to make them like my site again? Should I
apply for re-inclusion, and if yes, when is the time to do that (I have
never been out of their index, though)?



Please advise and please suggest any logical steps that I can take to remedy
this situation. I will be deeply thankful.


.

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