Giacomo - 3:23 pm on Feb 3, 2002 (gmt 0)

Hey Brett, thanks a lot for your historical account of the SE vs. SEO war!
Ah, the good ol' times when a listing in Yahoo!'s business category was still FFA... ;)

I totally agree knowledge = power, especially in this field.

What you say about "secret" SEO strategies being copied as soon as they are deployed, and then rendered ineffective by subsequent algo adjustments on the SE part, is much interesting. I wonder if Chaos Theory [directory.google.com] might offer a good interpretative paradigm for SE's tendency to react to "perturbations" (e.g., algo crackers) by reorganizing themselves into something new and eventually returning to a stable state...

But I guess that would a bit off-topic here, so I'm off to read your fantastic Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com] tutorial. :)

Many thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, and keep up the good stuff!