tedster - 3:28 pm on Mar 22, 2008 (gmt 0)

going from PR0 to PR7 in three months would set off alarm bells for google.

The odd thing is that Google mentions something like this in a patent -- actually the patent mentions monitoring for a rapid rise in the SERPs, not specifically in PR. I've been waiting for that particular technology to kick in, but I haven't really noticed it so far. Maybe it is in play but just kicks the domain out for human editorial inspection.