Not said very often, Thanks Google! (site re-indexed)

I have read many threads on here while looking for what to do if a site is de-indexed and most of the threads say to start a new domain as it is time intensive to get things back up and going. It was too late for me at this point in my journey so I thought I would see what it would take, for my situation, to get re-indexed. I want to share my experience to hopefully help someone out in the future. This was the first domain that I had ever purchased through an auction site. I was super stoked that I was able to acquire a domain 10+ year aged domain, but being nieve and new to the game didn't do all my homework. I checked the "way back machine" and saw that they only had 1 entry for my domain and the entry was 3 years prior to me purchasing it so I thought that I was good and purchased the domain. I spent a couple of weeks building out the domain and then let it sit for a couple more weeks.

I guess you don't learn things until you try them and fail. So here is my fail entry

Weeks 1-2: Built out site structure/content submitted site maps to google/bing
Week 4: No indexing in google webmaster tools... thought it needed more time to index
Week 4-6: Performed a back link campaign with some automation and some manual link building tactics
Week 8: Still no indexing... wtf? (Didn't think indexing took this long, but will let it ferment a little longer before getting paranoid)
Week 9: Tried to dig into what was going on with indexing by performing the following:
google-> site:mydomain.com (no results so I knew I wasn't getting indexed...but why?)
Asked around in the BHW IRC channel and people said to check google cache
google->cache:mydomain.com (gave me a 404 on this domain, but worked on my other domains so I assume that google has banned the domain for some reason)
Week 10: Submitted a request for reconsideration with google stating that I had purchased the domain and added in a couple of the manual back links I worked hard to get with higher authority sites telling google that my site/content was legit and that people want to be able to find my domain on google not just through the higher authority sites (but put the actual link where they were linking to me. I am the only external links on the page so they are super legit)
Week 11: Google approved my request and the message that they sent said "Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it voilated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site."
Week 12: 75% of my pages have been indexed woot!

So thank you everyone on here for helping to lead me in the right direction. If I wouldn't have been so patient I probably could have gotten the ban removed much much sooner. But it is better late than never.

edited to update my dates, I was looking at the calendar wrong and had too many weeks in there. Much more accurate now

"Submitted a request for reconsideration with google"

Curious what channel you used to submit the request? Did you post it on Google's Product Forum?

Also, did you verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools?

Finally, I've heard that setting up a Google AdWords account and running an ad to your URL will trigger a quick indexing of your site. It'd be interesting for you to test that out next time this happens.

You shouldnt really thank Google for making you going trough a struggle like this, but just be happy that they did what they should do, unban your domain xD

Google and manual labor, huh? What a waste of billion years of evolution.

Congratulations. and good job. Swell work mate!! - I love those foreign comments.

OK, so it was a manual penalty?

If g-team wants to clean up the internet with its the algorithm, their webspam team should email a penalty notice to the offender describing what it is. If it is automated enuff to penalize, it should be automated enuff to use an email server. It is just like a dam parking ticket for having no front plate, speeding, rolling through stop signs, you correct and are back on the highway. In this case, you'll be back on the info highway.
They should say specifically WTF is wrong.

edyang, I used this site for the reconsideration request:
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration

I did have my site verified with webmaster tools. Thanks for the tip about adwords will definitely give that a shot in the future.

I thought the same thing about it being a manual penalty. It is pretty crazy. I am just happy that things worked out otherwise I would have wasted a lot of time and money.