Once (about 12 years ago) I placed a temporary link on a punctuation mark to allow my client to view a new directory on his site prior to going public. This was catastrophic and that page fell like a stone and after I realised what was happening and rectified it, it took 2 months to recover.
In those days most webmasters (including me) did not fully understand the measures being rolled out by the major Search Engines to combat spam and they didn't tell us either. Not only did this new minefield take most designers by surprise, but also the Search Engines were very Punitive with their responses sometimes even banning an entire site indefinately.
Very embarassing and I never forgave myself, but that motivated me to invest many hours running experimental sites to discover as many No No's as I could think of testing for.
These days of course, the majors publish Guidelines and dislikes for all to see, so we have no excuses. If we try it on, we must accept the consequenses when we get found out.
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