I'm a fan of http://www.seo-browser.com/ - use their simple search and it's totally free.

Hi John

Quite simply, an on-page link is a link that is on the webpage. It can be split up into two categories: Internal and external.

Internal on-page links point to webpages sitting on the same domain. So links that are in your site navigation and your footer, for example, those would be internal on-page links.

External on-page links are those that point to different websites.  Why this is probably of interest to you is that it is generally recommended that you should only have external on-page links on your website that point to trustworthy and authoritative sites.  If you have links pointing to webpages that are spammy, low-quality and/or have been hacked, it could negatively effect how Google sees and ranks your site.

If I've misinterpreted your question, just let me know and I'll try to answer it better!

I don't see how noindexing pages would help with regards to a Panda recovery if you're already penalised.

Once the penalty is in place, my understanding is that it will remain so until all offending pages have been removed or changed to unique content.  Therefore, noindexing would not work - particularly if that page is accessible via an HTML/XML sitemap or a site navigation system.  Even then, I would presume that Google will have the URL logged and if it remained as is, any penalty removable would not be forthcoming.

Noindexing pages that has duplicate content but hasn't been penalised yet would probably prevent (or rather postpone) any penalty - although I'd still rather avoid the issue outright where possible.  Once a penalty is in place, however, I'm pretty sure it will remain until removed, even if noindexed.

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

Certainly don't see either having any negative SEO correlation (unless one looked particularly ugly and increased bounce/exit rates substantially).

I'm with Istvan in thinking it should be a user experience consideration.