TheMadScientist - 3:48 am on Nov 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

I would say you're pretty accurate in your summary and whether it's 'obvious' to some or not, I think it's definitely good info to be shared, because it seems like there's quite a bit of 'confusion' (for lack of a better word) around here these days, so good job on the clarification/summary and I'm personally glad you shared it.

A couple things I would point out, just for clarification and attempting to avoid more confusion since PageRank is mentioned, is:

Panda does not (afaik) 'cascade' from one site (external page) to another like PageRank (or not exactly, see below), but I do definitely agree with a page/site being given a 'score' rather than an in/out situation being created directly and 'low scoring' pages, as determined by Panda, can effect an entire site, so there is some type of 'cascading' or 'averaging' or 'overall impact' intra-site (within a domain) with Panda, but it's not inter-site (domains linking to you do not 'pass you' a portion of their Panda score and you do not pass your score to them via linking to their site), but for the sake of 'complete discussion' I do on occasion wonder if pages linked to from your site (pages) may 'reverse cascade' their Panda score to your site/pages*.

* IOW: We know with a relatively high degree of certainty you cannot pass your Panda Score to another site or page, but I have wondered on occasion if the score attributed to a page (or site) you link to could impact your overall score that's determined by the Panda portion of the ranking system. (I really don't know on this, it's just a thought I've toyed with on occasion.)

And, there may be an in/out 'threshold' of some type, but I think you're definitely right on an 'overall score' being determined by the Panda scoring system and then some other type of mechanism, an 'arbitrary value' or 'a relative to the whole' or something along those lines, determines the effect the score given has on indexing of a site/pages.