Dominique the so called “sand box” can be beaten, it is all about who links to your new domain. (Hint: Get a google ‘trusted’ site to link to your new domain and avoid ROS links from any domain.)
It is a fact that google’s algorithms can not detect all the methods used by SEOs, but then neither can the average person without ‘special’ tools. Just looking at a site (even its source) is not going to tell you if a site is cloaking or redirecting at the DNS.
Wager2wager said: “Without going into all the other sites I’ve found which basically do everything google has us believe are BIG no no’s which will lead to being penalized or even dropped, a high % of sites I’ve found in these top listing are doing exactly this!”
It sounds to me like you have been hanging out in SEO forums way too much. Read the google guidelines yourself here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8521
There is no propaganda or misinformation from google, all that comes from the search engine hangers on, guys like Danny Sullivan, Doug Heil and a few others, that act like they are independent, but really get a LARGE percentage of their income directly from google and from people that are confused about search marketing. These guys like to spread misinformation to confuse and beguile the search newbees (Where are all those confused and beguiled search newbees going to get their HIGHLY PRICED SEO advice and help from??? Well from the guys that confused and beguiled them in the first place…)
Can anyone tell I do not have a high opinion of most so called professional SEOs or SEO forums?
If you have found a site or sites that are breaking google’s Guidelines, turn them in to google’s shame report, if they are in fact breaking google’s rules they will be removed from the index. Sometimes it takes a few months for a bad site to get removed, but if they are in fact breaking googles guidelines they will be removed sooner or later. But you have to remember that what you see as search engine SPAM, google may not see that way.
You see Google has a problem:
99.9% of all Webmasters define Search Engine Spam as any site that ranks above their site…
I remember a well known engineer from google told me in the fall of 2002 that out of 10,000 reports of ‘SPAM’ sites in google’s SERP only 32 sites were removed from the index after all 10,000 had been gone thru by humans. In other words, only 32 sites out of the 10,000 that were reported were actually breaking any of google’s guidelines. The problem has only gotten much worse since then.
Dominique gave the best SEO advice I have seen in long while. The only thing I would add to what she said is, Build your site so you can be proud of it and build it for the user, not for yourself.