[rockdiesel]

Agreed. I was just simplifying, albeit poorly.

Sure, you can still build a high quality site on an EMD, but the main reason for the update was because it was a spammer's paradise. The majority of people registering them were doing so with the intent of abusing the EMD's power at the time. In many cases, spam will get you to the top of the SERPs. But during EMD's heyday, spam + an EMD almost guaranteed a #1 ranking for the target keyword. People were selling EMD starter packages that would include EMD, 5 articles, and some link spam for good measure. It was fairly easy because of the weight EMDs were getting in the algorithm. I have no data to back this up. Purely my observations from being in the space during that time.

So yeah, I should have clarified a bit. I wasn't trying to imply EMDs were all penalized.