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?

SEJ

Google, Webmaster, Guidelines, Penalized+Sites