After all these panda, penguin updates, among my websites, those that rank better are the "abandoned" ones, those for which I've never built any backlink, those with just on-site seo (exact mach domain, keyword in the title etc.). Anybody is having the same experience?
Some of my personal Web 2.0 blogs are surviving with a good rank. and most of them are just having good on page and a few back links from the authority sites. and a huge amount of forum links where i am personally active. So i think you are right.
I think this is just lucky. I have had it happen to my sites too. While it is nice to see sites rank without too many backlinks, I wouldn't base an SEO plan around not building links
