Totally agreed, read the Google guidelines, and you'll be just fine. Avoide such things as mentioned Above.
Please show us your source or evidence. What makes you think there are no ranking penalties? It's not something that is written anywhere officially, but there are many experts who have discussed their existance. I myself have seen no penalties in action apart from one on the Yahoo SE. The site went from bouncing around the 30 zone right into the 60 zone... I observed this as an immediate action, it was not a gradual decline (like the kind you get from competition). I monitored everyday, and one day it just plummeted. This is the kind of stuff that makes me think penalties exist. You say there are only filters? What do you mean by this - are we just talking about the same thing here?
I can't quote the exact page, as I've been in SEO for 5 years, and as much as I wish I could, I cannot remember every post Matt Cutts has done but he has done one where he basically explains the only penalty is a ban. To patrol billions of pages Google cannot use hand manipulation of their algorithm to catch people screwing around. To aide them in their monitoring of website Google applies filters for various issues they have found over the years. These filters are applied for a variety of reasons. One filter would be applied for keyword stuffing meta tags for example, another for keyword stuffing alt image tags, another for building too many links too soon or publishing too many pages at once. I won't go into all the filters that are in use, but again there is only one penalty and its a full BAN. There is no other way Google can protect itself but to use filters, and as such this is where you typically see some very good sites hurt because the filters at times, will pull in some innocent sites on the borderline...and apply a filter when perhaps the site did not deserve it. Hope it helps!
But if we don't ask questions about topics, then how are we going to learn. You taught us about Filters vs. Penalty. So may I ask you if you have a list of the Google Filters and what causes them?
You should always ask questions.... I think I was in an off mood yesterday. Google uses Filters as a way to protect themselves. There are billions of pages online...perhaps trillions by now and as such Google cannot police the pages using humans...this would be an impossible task. So to help themselves they use filters in the algorithm to weed out as much junk, spam, poorly thought SEO manipulations as possible, and then nasty cases will get human help. Google cannot adjust the algorithm per case... so they need a way secure their operations against spammers in the simplest method available and which can work quickly to defend against such. They use filters which are based on issues they have noted over the years. The filters are applied to sites for such things as artificial link building, paid links, thin affiliate sites, publishing 1,000,000 pages at once, sites that should focus on one geographical area for example a .co.uk site selling truck parts to the UK, should be filtered from .com results, determination of localization aspects, document inception date, dupe content and much more. Filters are like security guards at a large concert or sporting event. They help to keep things safe and secure for the masses. I never wrote out all the filters and I am sure many more exist and others here probably noted a few of their own and some I am keeping in my arsenal as they lend a competitive edge in outranking the competition. Hope this helps.
Sem-Advance - No Problem My objective on starting this Thread was to get a list of "Google Filters" written down. And then one by one get them defined. We all know they exist, but they are no documented anywhere.
Actually I don't know what the Google penalties are. This question was really helpful for me. I got to know what it is by the reply of users. Its really appreciating.