ciml - 12:44 pm on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

Jeremy:
> ...if there is an 'automotic' filter, it's more intelligent than that

I think that's the case. Sometimes a category at DMoz.org gets a penalty, but not the whole domain. It seems to happen only when it links to some proportion of penalised/banned sites.

I tend to think in terms of:

* A gets banned by hand (along with all pages on the domain)
* B gets PR0 from linking to A
* C gets the 'can have PR but not pass it on' penalty from linking to B

...but this is just a very crude model, it's much more complicated. Note that B and C are pages not whole domains. I'm not sure about A, can domains get automatic penalties?

As with Chiyo and Brad, I believe the cross-linking penalties from the end of 2001 to be automatic, also the guestbook penalty from this Spring.

PhilC:
> I'd like to know for certain if possible

I think this puts us at odds with Google. It's in their interest to keep some mystery around penalties. Partly it helps people from spamming in a penalty-avoiding manner, and partly the fear helps to convince people not to spam.

I'm pretty sure that human penalties used to be complete bans, while PR0 penalties were automatic. I wouldn't like to predict either way on what the current status is.