Vadim - 3:25 am on Apr 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

I believe the goal of the algo is to make the rank independent of the optimization. In other words all sites with the same quality of he content should have the same rank regardless of the optimization.

Therefore, it is not a penalty. The algo just observe the interests of the searches that don’t care about of the optimization and are interested in the content only.

The algo not cancel but rather diminish rank for over optimized sites.

If it by mistake decreases the rank too much, it looks as penalty.

If it by mistake decreases the rank too little, it may looks as over optimization sometimes works even for spammers.

The algo also increases the rank for the poorly optimized sites i.e. for the sites, which optimization is below the average.

If it by mistake increases it too much, it looks like that poorly designed sites have the advantages.

All this may be related to "TrustRank" that was filed with the USPTO about a month ago but probably works in some form at least several month. See
[webmasterworld.com ]

Personally, I believe that implementing "TrustRank" was not a good idea because even the authors understand that at present state of the art it needs human intervention. They cannot correct all errors manually, however.

Vadim.