Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

I have nothing personally against Google policing search, as search is Google's game, but it's not clear to me why some blogs are being hit with a Pagerank penalty, according to TechCrunch in Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms when others, even in my own Know More Media blog network, weren't.

Was I punished for driving too much traffic to my site?   I bet I'll never find out from Google directly as I don't control the blog template and don't have Google Webmaster Central access for this blog.

But that's not the point - the point is - if you do something that Google doesn't like, they decide to penalize you ... but your never really told why.  Why not?

Why don't the Computer Scientists, who apply algorithms broadly ever think to explain what the changes they're making are based on?

Anyway, today a friend let me know that Webmetricsguru.com dropped from pa PageRank 6 to a PageRank 4 overnight.  Nothing else much seems to have changed..but if it's a warning - if the purpose of these penalties for blog networks is to punish people for doing something Google thinks is wrong ...why don't they tell you what it is and why your site/blog is being penalized and what you can do about it?

But what's the point - there's no one on the Google side that is there to listen...I've learnt that much because I know how Google operates.