Let me describe a scenario - Company A and Company B are competitors. Company B sends out countless spam emails in the name of Company A's website (by spoofing the from email id and putting in a link to Company A in the email body), in this case, is it possible for Company A's website to get banned from Google? Is there a checklist somewhere of 'what may cause your website to get banned from google' and whether sending spammy emails is included in that list?
No, site A won't get banned in Google. It might get abused for spam, and the site might get closed by hoster P.S.: sites get banned 99.9999% only because on internal factors.
but companies B could damage company A by excessive link building from bad areas (PR0 directories etc). Somebody did that with me and my site went from PR5 to PR0 overnight...
i seriously doubt it than it is possible to make bad seo fro any competitor and use this tool against them
This issue is actually very nice to talked to.. I am not sure if Company A would get banned. This sounds like Company B is trying to use Company A's name to damaged its credibility to the users...
To be sure, Company A should always make an eye on everything that's happening like that scenario and immediately report it.. In a way or another, Company B's deed will somewhat trigger flagging and Company A was penalized, it may takes time to recover..
Company A may face Google penalty if its SMTP server is sending spam But without having control on SMTP server of company A, no other company can use their email ID to send the mailer. Thus Company A will not get Google ban nor its host will close it. In case if Company B succeeds to do it, required actions can be taken on time before the innocent one faces any problem.
It is possible to spoof the from email ID in email - so Company B can make it appear that actually sent the email. For proof, you can see any phishing email from bank - you will see from: email appears to be from the bank itself. Company A's host wont close its website - that part is right - but what if somebody complains to Google forwarding the spam emails and everything - it will appear as though Company A is sending out such emails - and if sufficient number of people complain, then Google may ban the site?