Black_Knight - 7:58 pm on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

I don't think they would automate it, given the whole 'house of cards' potential they could cause to their own db. Imagine: WebmasterWorld gets penalized DMOZ.org gets the same.... (BK says: This happened, see [webmasterworld.com...] and ask whether you think Google applied a PR0 to DMOZ by hand) Yahoo.com gets the PR0...

This is a great argument that ends the debate only if you assume that the PRzero penalty is exactly that - either normal rank or no rank.

However, SearchKing has been well documented and went from PR8 to PR4. Not zero, but still a major loss of PR.

GoogleGuy may well have hinted that the PR penalty is done by hand before, bit I doubt it usually is. Remember when the PR penalties first became a major issue? Remember GoogleGuy apologising that they had tweaked the filter too high? How can that happen by hand?

I believe that the majority of the PR penalisation is automated. At least in terms of Googlebot flagging thousands of sites each day, which perhaps a human then has to select to penalise or ignore (not always with enough time to be as careful as we'd hope).

I believe that the big troubles with PR penalties months ago (well documented here and in every other relevant forum around) were a clear sign that the penalties were automated. I believe we all witnessed them tuning the algorithm more carefully based on that feedback.

Ammon Johns