Could Google Punish Some Links?

Would it be fair of Google to penalise links that make heavy use of keywords in the anchor text, as I suggested that it might be yesterday?

Outright no. I have a page about "Secured Loans" on my CompareMortgageRates.co.uk web site (yes, notice site name for safety!). Given secured loans is a keywords would I then be expected to change the anchor text to something strange (links as shown on the right)?

Overall, probably yes. It's a technique employed in links directories (which Google frowns upon), links sellers, spammers etc. It probably would catch more people that Google target than it would hit who should escape.

So it is something they could have tried. Just a pity that my mortgage site talks so much about secured loans, unsecured loans, mortgage calculators and other keyword specific anchor texts.

As I mentioned when I discussed Starz graphic links are being followed – and in this case followed well. Yes with no apparent SEO benefit because there isn't the chance to stuff the link full of keywords. In this site's case, every graphic link has been followed and all pages on the site are of equal page rank.

Google does evolve. Maybe this is part of the next evolution. Maybe they've tried to knock out the target sites and are now watching the drama unfold and seeing which other sites have been unfairly hit so that they can further refine the criteria and get closer to "perfection". After all, why else would Google make publicly available it's page rank? That must cost Google a lot of time, effort and cash. What do they get from it?