I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin.

So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run.

So why would these links still be reported?

How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?).

In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away.

Looking for some insight here please.

cheers,

Mike