Google's 950 Penalty

[CaptainJSparrow]

To add more confusion to the mix, I've seen what looks like an obvious penalty for a keyword and yet that same page can be in the top 10 for a different keyword or keyphrase.

We have numerous instances of that. On some pages, we're buried for the target keyword phrase (this is the anchor text of all the incoming links) but we place #1 for slight variations of that phrase. We have a theory that google will flag a page for a certain keyword phrase...say if you have 75 links at the bottom of your amateur page with most using the words "amateur sex" to link to your link exchange partners. Google will flag you so that you can not show up well for "amateur sex" but for "sex amateur" you're fine, or something such.

If this is the case, will just changing the anchor text of your link exchanges away from the phrase "amateur sex" be enough, or did google already identify all 75+ sites (because most of those sites also trade every category page with each other) as some sort of link farm and you will never place well until you remove those links, and submit a reinclusion request?