whitenight - 2:08 am on Apr 6, 2007 (gmt 0)

ok, a couple of things here.

There's a HUGE difference between a "penalty" ie negative co-efficient and a fraction.

Don't simply discount the words and their meanings.
It's PRECISELY why people are having difficulties understanding why their sites have tanked.

If you stop thinking in terms of "penalty" and in terms of multipliers between 0.000001 and 1, you start realizing what needs to "enhanced" on your site... instead of what needs to be 'changed', fiddled around with, etc. to "remove a penalty"

When you start with the right fundamentals (pun intended) it's incredibly easy to figure out what's going on with G and your rankings.

Using Tedster's simple but effective equation, one could look at the algo as using a standard or modified bell curve for it's rankings.
The top 1% reflect the top 1000 SERPS... start drifting into the >2% arena and suddenly you find yourself with a -950 "penalty"

Depending on which of the factors had your site ranking at all being given different weight, you also find yourself asking if G has changed their algo. When in fact, your site was only ever ranking mainly due to 1 or 2 factors. Figure out what the 5,6,7 other factors that your site's weak on and then your not dependent on G engineers tweaking any 1 or 2 ranking coefficients.