bears5122 - 12:26 am on Sep 13, 2005 (gmt 0)

This is probably much easier said than done, but I think steering away from silly tactics to stop spam would be my suggestion. I'm not saying not to fight spam, but don't create some weird formula that says a new site can't rank for a year or getting a link from a non-relevant site will send you down the rankings. Although things like that work in a way, they also kill your results. The small percent of spammers that get hurt by these tactics don't account for the large percent of innocent sites that don't.

I guess where I'm going is what Google has turned into. They have stale results (especially if a site made in 2005 can't rank) and an algorithim that is so complex that it has destroyed their SERPs. I'd much rather search and find a site for someone who built 10,000 link with the same anchor text than to have a complete pile of garbage. Why? Well the guy who built 10,000 links probably is relevant, while throwing in too many filters and variables ends up with a result filled with scrapers and message boards. I know a search engine like Yahoo! is easier to game, but to a common user, their results are probably more relevant.

In a nutshell, try not to be too cute with the filters and penalties. :-)