stever - 7:12 am on Apr 11, 2003 (gmt 0)

buzzmaster, I think the answer to your question on how much weight search engines' algorithms give to themes is (at the moment) relatively little. Themes help vastly on things like authority status and your attractiveness to viewers and potential link partners (which are tangentially related to the algorithm) but if we relate it strictly to reciprocal link value in the algorithm, then I think there is not much value outside link text, and possibly surrounding text and link page title.

So why is all this fuss made about themes? Well, 99% of us will do the on-page stuff and obsess about an extra word here or there in the HTML. What do we do that makes us different? Some of us spend our energy building hundreds of disposable domains, some of us decide to cloak, others will go for the risky but sometimes rewarding route of link farming, paying for PR or hidden layers/CSS/javascript.

Some of us like to spend our time trying to analyse what the search engines might be thinking about and where they might be going - and there's plenty of evidence (for me, at least) that this is a valid direction:

1. Search engines like directories. DMOZ, Google, Yahoo, Zeal. They give them value and are connected to them in a business sense. What do directories do? They organise and list sites which are similar and related.
2. Search engine research and practice is moving in the direction of themes. To take Google, look at "Similar Pages", Google News or Google Sets. In fact, I suppose that you could philosophise that a search engine creates a theme in response to every search query.

But, most of all, themes are user-friendly. As a human you use themes to think and to search - you mentioned php and web development being connected. And search engines like user-friendly ideas. I am sure Google takes ODP results despite the failings of DMOZ because it is user-centric. Look at the rage on this board when there is a big Google algorithm change - "Google needs to watch out, webmasters made it and webmasters can break it" - Google doesn't care, it is concentrating on what it perceives as user value. Read through the quotes from GoogleGuy - there is a constant user-friendly theme running through the comments. Some say that's PR - I would say it's both PR and practice.

And as a responsible webmaster, if my idea of user value coincides with the search engines' idea, I am in a happy place. For me, themes and themed reciprocal linking (got back on-topic at the end, paynt!) are about future-proofing my sites and eventually, about moving slowly away from a reliance on search engine traffic.