A WebmasterWorld discussion (paid subscription required) touches upon the fear of penalties with too many inbound links. As many people realize that original content and original research really does help garner those inbound links, sites that provide exhaustive information can really get a lot of inbound links in a short period of time. The webmaster in question is seeing about 100 links a day. Could that raise a red flag and mess with rankings?
Most people agree that it's a matter of time until Google sees this behavior and filters out the site for the abnormal activity, especially since it's not a high profile site. Age and trust of domains are important for the Google algorithm and penalties, according to forum members.
Last week, we blogged about a patent that explains this whole phenomenon. Too many inbound links is perceived as spamming the search engines.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld (paid subscription required).