The idea of an "over-optimisation penalty" began soon after the Florida update almost two years ago. It was the first main attempt at explaining the changes in the serps that the Florida update caused, and it was accepted by many people at the time. But it was soon seen to have been a mistake - that it couldn't possibly account for the changes. Since then, some people haven't forgotten it, and still believe that it exists. To the best of my knowledge, there is no reason to suppose than an over-optimisation penalty exists, and no evidence to support the theory.
The idea behind the OOP theory is that different aspects of optimisation on and related to a page are given points, which are added up. If the total exceeds a certain number, then the page is over-optimised, and is penalised. The anchor-text example given in the article could have caused the total to exceed an allowed number, but I don't think so. I really don't think that the ranking changes would occur as quickly as the author stated. As a matter of fact, he didn't say that it had actually happened. It was written more like a hypothetical example than an actual occurence.
I am convinced that the OOP idea is often thought to account for occurences that are caused by quite different things. For instance, Google sometimes runs filters over the index. Being caught by one filter or another can easily be put down to the mythical OOP.
I am not categorically stating that an OOP doesn't exist. I've written this from the point of view that the OOP idea was shown to be a mistake when the phrase, "over-optimisation penalty", was first suggested to account for the Florida changes, but many people didn't realise that it was a mistake, and it got stuck in memories and forum posts ever since then. It's possible that one or more of the engines have introduced such a thing since then, but I haven't seen or come across any evidence for it.
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can we talk about actual figures?
