OP: how did the recent Penguin update affect the site? What about the rest of the serps, did some decent aff sites get dropped? Or have these weak off page ones been there for a while?
Serp is the same in one I had a top 5 ranking that got dropped with Penguin. Everything now is either super low CI or authority sites like YT.
Another thing about anchor text, even back before the Payday update you could front page Payday terms with less than 10% anchor so I doubt you need much on this serp either.
The old #1 site used to have a 70% anchor text match and is now off of page 1. The new #1 site is a site that appeared out of nowhere and it doesn't look like there was much off page done for it.
as for my site, my total traffic volume remained stable for through the update (maybe even up a few %).