dpd1 - 12:26 am on Jan 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I agree... True quality PR and customers come from word of mouth. Most of my business comes from that, but my participation in those circles is key. That's something that many site owners don't want to do... They don't want to get their hands dirty. They want to find the perfect way to manipulate the system and just wait for the traffic to show up. That probably works, but when I look at the amount of garbage that now shows up in searches, I have to wonder... how much longer will it work. It seems like it's an exercise in futility as it is right now. More and more I see people asking in forums, questions like "Does anyone know a good place to get ____?". Obviously those people could just go into Google and look, and a while back they probably would have. But why are they not now? That tells me people are being turned off by search results now. And when you get a bunch of link farms, 50 directories that don't lead anywhere, and ads for stuff the site with the ad doesn't even sell... who can blame them.