* Excessive spamming
* Linking to too many

ALL the search engines will ban a site they find spamming them. The main reason Yahoo will ban a site is un-natural linking patterns when it bans the entire network of sites. Yahoo is the best at bringing down excessively cross linking networks of sites.

Other things that will get you banned is cloaking, redirecting domains incorrectly (same as cloaking really but a low tech version). Setting up networks of sites to boost PR. Hidden links on a site. Link farming (can include hidden links also), malaware/spyware hijacking, excessive popups.

Things that will get you penalised are hidden text, keyword stuffing, use of doorway pages . Using doorway pages and redirects will get you banned if picked up.

Many people confuse a penalty with a withrdawal of benefit. It is a common mistake, and in fact Temi appears to have made it above. Excessive inbound links too quickly doesn't get your site penalised, it simply removes the benefit fo links from it. OK technically the outcome is the same in that your rankings go to the dogs, but it is not a penalty. Much the same can happen with duplicated content. google simply refuses to entertain it so removes it. You are not really penalised though, just not getting benefit.

There are lot of seo technique which can be penalized. For instance:
hiding text, creating doorway pages, cloaking, tricky redirecting.

Thanks Guys

[quote=OldWelshGuy;22073]
Many people confuse a penalty with a withrdawal of benefit. It is a common mistake, and in fact Temi appears to have made it above.
[quote]

which of the sins did you say I have commited, keyword stuffing?

No not like that. You mentioned that 'linking to too many' would get you banned or penalised (you didn't state which' but they don't, they only get a filter applied which negates the nenefit rather than penalises.

If anyone is wondering what the difference is I will use a simple example.

site 1 uses dodgy linking which is picked up and all link benefit is cut to zero benefit meaning that at ABSOLUTE worse case they can score zero.

Site 2 uses cloaking which is picked up, and a minus 500 penalty score is given. so the maximum they can score now is benefit less 500. If the score of site 1 is 300 and the score of Site 2 was 400, Site 1 will apear above site 2 because of the -500 penalty.

I see, thanks for that clarification