Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped has picked up on a slight adjustment to Google Webmaster Guidelines in terms of penalizing sites.
Previous Google Webmaster Guidelines:
… we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google’s partner sites.
New Webmaster Guidelines:
… we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google’s partner sites.
The change is the terminology between removing a site from Google and removing or penalizing a site.
Philipp brings this up, and I also wonder, what was the cause of this change to Google Webmaster Guidelines terminology?
Law suits? The widespread discussion of the Google -30 penalty?