decaff - 4:49 pm on Sep 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

BakedJake...

My take on this process is that Google has been doing some serious "data mining" for the last couple of years as it develops out its algo and engine...and tracks all sectors of it's SERPs...

Data mining is all about "trending" the data...looking for patterns and anomalies..
One consistent pattern would be ... that established Web sites with a history should show "normalized" behavior..which simply means..that these sites are addressing their respective "audience" through content initiatives...building link relationships (and these would typically occur through a one-to-one type process...not hundreds of new links suddenly showing up on the radar)..
and so on...

Today...when a new site that is trying to "suddenly" compete in a competitive area shows up in the SERPs with hundreds of inbound links, a huge number of content pages but no real history...this raises a red flag as far as Google is concerned...this would fall under the "anomalies" aspect of data mining..

It's a no-brainer for Google to see new sites and what they bring to the table...and also to track the competitive sectors and watch for this type of "SPAM" behavior...
or patterns to design responses to..

Google is simply trying to meter the process some with the "sandbox" initiative...and you can bet that the big established companies are "communicating" their needs to Google through "legislative type channels" (think Washington, D.C. and how Bills and Laws are developed and implemented through "lobbying")...

Google has to find a way to control this process as they continue to expand their global/multi-language reach or the SERPs will become a sea of useless information...

The collateral damage has to be an accepted factor in all of this...and yes...this means that sites that don't use apparent "SEO tactics" and simply want to address and serve their "visitor base" may be affected by these algo changes (and in some cases we know that Google will manually look into really aggressive situations)

The other argument is that Google is looking for ways to generate more revenue...so this "sandbox" process may be forcing some advertisers to step into the PPC thing while their "new" content is in the "silicon queue box"

(now back to my automated content generator and link spamming software...oooohaaahaaa! - just kidding)