tedster - 8:27 am on Jul 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

Meta tags can help get you 950d or other spam penalties. To be precise, Google says the meta description doesn't help ranking, but it never said the tag can't help you get a penalty. It's not immune both ways (positive/negative).

I don't think a meta description can get you a spam penalty on Google. I never saw any evidence of that, not even with that crazy, all-over-the-place, -950 gizmo. Not that Google "couldn't" use the signal - you're definitely right that they can - but I never saw evidence that they do.