Robert_Charlton - 1:29 am on Oct 2, 2008 (gmt 0)

CainIV - Quick thoughts about some factors that may skew your tests. The effects you're testing, as I've observed them on inner pages, are related both to how competitive a query is, and to how "good" your inbound links are. Some terms are competitive enough that they absolutely depend on inbound links... and some don't.

There are also, of course, onpage factors, which have gotten increasingly complex... but my feeling is the algo now includes an overall statistical view of a page.

Some measure of user satisfaction, as I've mentioned before, also appears to be part of the algo... and again that seems to vary by how competitive a phrase is, where it is in the serps, and apparently also the market area.