michael_heraghty - 4:31 pm on Dec 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

I agree -- Google can't really remove eye candy, as people will just come up with more and more inventive ways to create it.

This is just another fascinating aspect of the "co-evolutionary" relationship between site designers/optimisers and Google.

Google urges web designers to ask themselves "Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?" -- but to adopt such an approach would be naive. The fact is that search engines not only exist, but sites depend on getting listed in them.

The real trick is to find a balance between usability and findability.