chiyo - 2:15 pm on Apr 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>2) Such a list would have Webmasters designing for Google, not for users;<<

Europe is absolutely correct. What possible advantage could publishing such a list be except for people "optimizing" sites? Google wants to rank sites by themselves thankyou, and SEO's working out their methods only make it extremely difficult!

And his point about the algo changing rapidly is extremely pertinent too.

Really 99% of the time many people put into SEO is a waste of time, though it is true that 1% of it works long term, and spamming can sometimes work for a while short term.

The only SEO principles that work long term are the same ones that apply to all documents off and on line. The Web was NOT designed at its roots for advertising, but for the sharing and connecting of information, so you really do have to think of web pages as informational documents for the correct karma! Good Structure and organization, good descriptive titles and headings. A unique useful message. And genuine citations.

Judge Jefferies wrote:

>>the SERPS are currently cram packed with spam<<

Which SERPS? I dont see any cram packed with spam that i would use in my normal life. And i use google as a normal user very frequently.

I tend to think the SERPs that are crammed with spam tend to be highly commercial queries, and slowly but surely both advertisers and browsers will learn to click on the adwords instead. Google was never meant to be a commercial search engine, its information-based algo was not designed to handle it. Indeed the bidding and PPC systems like overture and Adwords work much better for these categories.

Worrying about these SERPS is a waste of time long term as eventually commercial products and services pages will be available in more relevant way (to the user) in Adwords, and people will not just bother with the main listings.