Google Toolbar gives Google vast pools of data which it uses to rank websites in the search results

Is link building important anymore?

The idea of Google Panda was to try and remove poor quality sites that were clogging up the search engine results pages (SERPs). The plan was to kill off duplicate content or content that was no more than a bunch of links. But why have so many innocent people seemingly been caught in the cross fire? And are they really innocent?