Marcia - 6:05 am on Sep 23, 2008 (gmt 0)

>>Is this a hint that keyword rich URLs may not work (rank) so well in a future algo?<<

Keyword rich URLs *might* be worth something, but if so it's too miniscule to fret over - with Google, anyway.

>>I see this as a hint by the big G to SEO'ers out there...<<

Swanny, I don't think it's aimed at SEO'ers at all; I think some G folks must have had a meeting and decided to make a well-intentioned goodwill gesture (which I really believe it is) to help out the mom 'n pops who really don't know anything beyond using stuff off the shelf and ready-made templates or software like FP.

There really are people running web business for years who don't know what HTML and CSS are, much less anything about mod_rewrite - for real. Not only that, I've seen a web designer who does a LOT of business with 6 different URLs for the same page on their own site - yes, 6 - using different domains and not a clue about 301s.