[Duncan]

1. Having your rankings take "a huge drive" (sic) and being penalized are two very different things. Whihc was it and if you were penalized, what for?

My big board went from 350,000 indexed pages to 8,000- and from a pagerank 4 to a pagerank 0; thus suggesting to me that my site was indeed penalized. Penalization, the act of being penalized, DOES result in a huge DIVE in terms of search engine rankings. You may want to consult with an SEO forum if you are not aware how these correlate.

2. How could adding one outgoing link possibly cause what you seem to think it caused? Do you really think that is even remotely plausible?

What I was asking in the initial post was if the link gets added as a "sitewide" link on our "sitemap" which is sent to google. I was sending no accusations; however just asking if this is what may have caused my penalization and if this is the reason that a branding free liscense is not available on this script.