PageRank Restored After Multiple Reconsideration Requests

So it took about two months but Google finally reversed their manual penalty on JustinGermino.com and DragonBlogger.com after I finally not only removed what they found was the penalty (they never officially told me anything other than the generic “OUTBOUND LINKS DETECTED” but also I think my explanation in the reconsideration request was the final deciding factor which helped them choose to remove the penalty, this is because it took 2 reconsideration requests and the first one went with them choosing to keep the penalty and not remove it even after I didn’t do anything different other than word my reconsideration request differently the second time I submitted it.

So I knew I was penalized for hosting external dofollow links not because I was doing it with any attempt to manipulate PageRank, but because I was hosting guest articles from sites like MyBlogGuest and Post Runner as well as some others.  As a result of the penalty to MyBlogGuest just about every site hosting articles or who had been a part of that network was penalized it would seem and I went about removing hundreds of guest posts from my blogs as well as implementing a nofollow plugin which made all links on all posts nofollow.  This combined with some soak for Google bots to pick up the changes, I filed my first reconsideration request only for Google to say that my site still didn’t meet guidelines.

So I filed another reconsideration request, this time asking for specifics and telling them everything I did to try and become compliant, I explained that I did host articles from MyBlogGuest but now all links are nofollow and articles of lower quality have been deleted.  I also pleaded that they link and explain which parts of my site were not compliant so that I may quickly correct the issue.

The only thing the responded with was the manual spam action revoked, but I think explaining the steps you go through and how you got into the situation (or believe you got into the situation helped).

Has anyone else been successful in getting their PageRank restored yet after a manual action?