Marcia - 9:37 am on Sep 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

>>perhaps an attempt to devalue links a little in favour of page content?

I just pushed a site up from #7 to #1 - just a minor keyword phrase but very targeted so it *works* - but mind you, it's a site that got hit with the Florida debacle from great & climbing rankings to zilch on good keywords - and hasn't been touched since December until just recently. ONLY on-page and minor title changes, that's it. The site has never been promoted or gotten links, it's been living off Yahoo all this time. I'm not *scorekeeping* the point is that it was *only* on-page changes.

I know most of what's wrong with it (aside from lacking links), a few things on the site are the same as another site that got hit - the other was fixed and is doing great. But I'm very interested in all the theories, because it's a perfect test-bed to try all these things out, as long as the Yahoo rankings don't get messed with.

Actually, it's a lot of fun to try to figure these things out. Aggravating sometimes, but that's what keeps it so fascinating.

It feels like we're all of us missing something. What is there that never gets mentioned in discussions about Google optimization that may be carrying weight now without us even thinking about it?