Adam_Lasnik - 11:11 pm on Nov 3, 2006 (gmt 0)

Hey there,

Tackling some of the questions in this thread...
- Yes, you need to be logged into your Webmaster Tools account to be able to file a reinclusion request.
- No, just because you see the link (under Tools) to file a reinclusion request does not mean that your site has been penalized. We show this link to everyone.

I know we can do better in identifying spam and not-spam in our index, and I'm also confident we'll be notifying more Webmasters about guidelines issues and such over time.

We generally don't comment on specific penalties, though my colleagues and I do try to provide other helpful information here and in other forums (including, of course, our own).

JWC (and others), I do think, by the way, that you're likely to see a rather biased sample in this and similar threads. Webmasters who *have* received notices from us generally take care of the issues we've notified them about and go along their merry way... and are, perhaps unsurprisingly, less likely to post in threads like this.

Lastly, our team here is working hard to improve our FAQs over time so that there are fewer ambiguities.