or at least most people in this thread think so. But then in other forum threads I have been referred to as a genius. I am glad someone believes in me more than I do ;)

If you find a good book (like A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History) sometimes you are not paying for what is in the book, but also what biases or other information are not included in the book (as any author, business model, or information format carries biases).

I think one of the biggest reasons many people fail is they try to satisfy everyone. Average people suck. Experience is the best trainer, but people discounting the value of other things typically tend to start from the framework of thinking their time is worthless. And so it is. Everything is overpriced. Until you die.

Andy Hagans has a great post about getting a new domain indexed and ranked.

Now a new domain probably isn't any better than the other one we had, and I wanted the launch to go right, dang it. So I grabbed it every trusted link that I could (quickly) -- Dir.yahoo.com, Sbd.bcentral.com, Business.com, a hosted adverpage on an older domain, and an in-content link from an old, ranking (trusted) related site that a friend owns (Thanks mate!)... Two days later, bam! 28 pages in, four days later, 160 pages in.

I wonder which friend gave him that trusted link ;)

The trend to ranking in Google is moving away from just get more more more more more more to getting less but higher quality links. After you get enough trusted links you will probably automatically pick up a few spammy links, but the value of actively building low quality links is diminishing daily (at least, if you care to rank well in Google).

Occasionally you will see people say that paying $300 for a link in the Yahoo! Directory is a rip off, and a couple years ago the economics leaned more toward getting many low trust links. But over the last few years there have been tons of bottom feeding business models which have sprung out of a link = a vote line of thinking to where Google needed to obfuscate the market and increase the cost of low cost links.

Indeed the concept of link = vote will still be sold for a great deal of time (similarly to how people still sell search engine submission software and services). Most of it is not honestly valuable, but if it is profitable and scalable and there is a market people will keep selling it.

Keep in mind that if many search spammers follow the same recipe then the relevancy algorithms might get rebaked, but for now

• for Google, with links less is more
• the cost of some trusted links (in terms of time, money, and/or editorial review processes) makes many of them prohibitively expensive for certain spam content models

In one of Matt's recent SEO videos he also mentioned the value of soft launching.

I believe that, in general, the attention span of most technologically enabled people is getting shorter by the day. In addition the increased number of content channels and communication associated with the web leads people to become more biased.
I have not done any research, so I may be wrong on those ideas, but this is what leads me to say that:

• Automated spam (email, blog comments, direct mail associated with registering for a trademark, etc) which may even look relevant forces you to judge things quicker.
• Search makes it easier to get "good enough" answers quickly.
• The web (and search) let you self select social groups with predefined similarities.
• There is a far greater number of news channels than there were just a few years ago.
• We tend to consume media that fullfills or reinforces our predefined worldview.
• RSS (and devices like Tivo) make it easy to consume media how and when you want to.
• Sites like YouTube make it easy to embed other's content within your site.
• Google Video now allows you to link to an exact second of a video in their collection.
• My shorter and more straightforward posts usually get more comments and more quality editorial links. I also notice many of the Digg homepage and Del.icio.us popular URLs are short and straightforward articles titled things like "10 ways to x".
• The increased number of social aggregation sites is making it easier for people to see what ideas spread, how they spread, and why they spread in near real time.
• My biased and/or controversial posts usually get more comments and more quality editorial links. (And thus are more easily found and locked into more self reinforcing positions.) Can you name a popular political blog that is not highly biased?
• As the amount of information on the web increases and search engines trust old content until new content proves its value the new content is forced to be of a higher quality than the old content to gain exposure. Being of higher quality generally means being more citation worthy. Which frequently means being more controversial.

If you have been on the web for a while have you found it easier or harder to meet people off the web that are outside your realm of trade? Have your media consumption habits become more or less biased since you started interacting on the web?

I am a big fan of usage data as an SEO and marketing mechanism (especially because usage data leads to editorial citations if the site is linkworthy), but I doubt usage data alone will fully replace linkage data anytime soon. Why? The web is but a small fraction of overall advertising market. With search companies controlling so little offline media you would doubt that they would want to let ads outside of their network have control over their relevancy, wouldn't you?

Why does Matt Cutts frequently obfuscate the policies on buying and selling links outside of AdWords? Because abusing links undermines Google's relevancy and Google does not get a cut of the action.

Google's current results are heavily biased toward informational resources. If Google was heavily reliant on usage data it would commercially bias their organic search results and make their paid ads seem less appealing.

I do not think the recent Yahoo! Update was as sharp as they may have hoped for. If you have a variety of sites that were marketed using vastly different techniques and know a market or two well it is pretty easy to pick up on some of the patterns.

Caveman, one of my best friends in the biz, is great at picking up the high level changes (and maybe that is why he got the nickname algo guy). He made a couple great posts in a WMW thread about the update

Here he talks about filtering out the most appropriate page

Odd. I see orphaned pages (i.e., abandoned; not doorway pages) - with NO inbound internal or external links any more - ranking on page 1 of numerous SERP's. Don't think I've ever seen that before. ... They seem to be filtering out the best sub page to show for a specific search (e.g., "red widgets") and instead are now showing a page above it or below it or beside it.

When I mentioned Google ranking a home mortgage type page for a consumer loan (a few weeks back in a rant post) that I am now seeing the exact same page rank for the exact same query in Yahoo! (not due to any type of spam, but due to algorithms that are ranking page B for having navigation related to page A on it - see DaveN's post about a recent Google non-relevancy fiasco).

I am seeing some sub pages rank for things you would expect the more authoritative home page to rank for, and in other cases I am seeing the home page rank for rather specific queries where far more relevant sub pages exist.

I am seeing the move toward promoting authoritative domains in Yahoo!'s SERPs in general. Not only is the trend visible as a general rule of thumb, but I also have a crusty old authoritative domain. I extended the domain out from its initial focus into related higher margin fields. I have not built up the authority on those new pages yet, but they ranked well in Google due to crustiness and high authority links to the site in general. They also ranked well in MSN due to on the page optimization. The site was not getting much love in Yahoo! until this algorithm update. The love (and increased earnings) are likely due to Yahoo! placing far more weight on core domain authority and applying that throughout relevancy scoring for all documents on the authoritative site.

Here Caveman talks about Yahoo!'s shift away from a literal MSN type algorithm to attempting to move more towards a more elegant link based Google type algorithm

What if, for example, Y! substantially altered the way that links factor into the algo: Both from a quality and quantity standpoint.

Y's algo used to be much more onpage and kw oriented. Last year that began to change. Links became more a factor.

In this new update, links are again, IMO, playing a significant role: Both the quality and quality of links. Y seems to be exploring ways to push authoritative links more to the fore.

Brilliant stuff Caveman.

As a marketer, I think Yahoo! shifting toward a sitewide authority type algorithm that tries matching natural text is a big deal since it leaves MSN as the last literal type search algorithm. The current Y! algorithm hints that Yahoo! is willing to throw a bit of paid inclusion revenue in the trash can if it leads to more relevant search results. Within a year I wouldn't be surprised if

• Yahoo! solves their guestbook and blog spam link problems (and some of the other low quality link issues)

• common forum questions about things like keyword density and the like are replaced by people talking more about spreading out your keywords, writing naturally, and using semantically related phrases
• many people trade websites instead of just buying / selling / renting individual links
• about 100,000 free service sites pop up that are nothing more than link schemes (via stuff like add our link to your site with this badge or whatever)

As a bonus, here is an image of the Yahoo! SERPs for SEO. Notice how many of the domains listed have the word authority next to them in my description of why I think they rank.

As far as SEO goes the word authority is generally synonymous with "heavily linked to via natural citations from other powerful sites."