Google's 950 Penalty

[spacemanspiff]

But, I'm definitely not sure that "the group" and the kind of co-op linking Cutts described would be seen as similar by google.

I've long thought that this was the case. A typical "link farm" or "co-op" to me has always been one of those deals where you're given some code to put up on your page(s), so a whole lot of pages have exactly the same list of links with the same anchor text. I think everyone would point to that and scream "link farm".

Now what if Google has tightened up the algo just a little bit (which I suspect is the root of their patent filing of Dec. 06), and due to the way we provide our trade partners with our desired anchor text we've fallen prey to the more sensitive algo? We don't all have identical lists of links, but they're just close enough. If every LL webmaster had changed his anchor text recip page after every trade, would we be seeing a whole lot of link lists in the 950 graveyard?