Shaun might point the firm suing him here:
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001522.shtml

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/

Matt never went to court, but he got legal clearance to make a statement that pretty much wiped out that case.

Thanks Danny (links a bit funny) so -

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001522.shtml

 and

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/

"Google's vague guidelines".

Huh?

They're only vague if you are constantly looking for a loophole in them so you can say "well it didn't exactly say that".

Those guidelines get clearer and clearer all the time.

I recently read some article that said 90% of people that call themselves SEOs are snake-oil salesman. I'm sure that was an understatement.

I have no idea which SEO firm the guy is outing, but good luck to you mate. I hope you nail 'em.  

Cheers for that. To be honest it is a frightening prospect getting more so by the day. I've got an opinion on something, and I've spoken out, and picked the fight, but each day passes and i question my motives, evidence, my own knowledge, my own history, and faith (in seo).

It is such a gray area, but can you believe it gets more complicated by the day. Recent communications (not with me but another getting sued) have left me gasping. It is so unbelievable, and it's further complicated matters (i think for seo firm!)

Perhaps my idea of spammy evidence (domains, directories etc) isn't everybody elses? How do I know what's ethical, I've only been in the industry ten minutes compared to some.

I don't name the company, I didn't finish the test (at the very beginning this was an experiment) and i've clearly stated in the article it's my opinion. I'll not even confirm if the article was about the company suing me, at this stage.

One of the reasons I'm not just taking down the article is because they want money out of me, and I'm not paying THEM a penny! I'll give double away first, even to a lawyer.

I will just give an example that is on my blog

On some pages I have some quite large tag clouds. I actually allow them to grow dynamically based on the number of external links on a page.

How many entries can you have in a tag cloud before Google would regard it as keyword stuffing or it starts to dilute the topical value in the main article (which is quite long)

>They're only vague if you are constantly looking for a loophole in them so you can say "well it didn't exactly say that".

I'm pretty sure that's a big part of a lawyers job :-)