walkman - 3:27 pm on Apr 24, 2011 (gmt 0)

Speak for yourself. How does one SEO for Google? When you perform SEO, it is for ALL User-Agents, not just Google. I don't understand that statement. SEO is no different whether you're targeting Google, Bing, Yahoo!, InfoSeek, AltaVista, Inktomi, etc. Not much has changed in this area over the years. It has gotten much more technical but the basics are still the same.

Wow, so you picked a technicality. First, not all search behaved the same over keyword density, links, thin content etc so people focused most on Google. Second, most people target Google with their SEO, how's that? Look at the page titles, text on page, links, link structure...virtually every successful commercial site has adjusted their site to Google /search engines. Design for people might work fine if you're nerdy professor and write a thing here and there, in e-commerce you will be eaten alive by those that adjust their sites for Google. Even journalists now are trained in SEO and choose their words based on they think it will help them to rank.

My_Media, my demotion I believe was over a specific thing that Google and Matt Cutts supported before they hit people very hard with Panda. While pages can always be improved and will never be perfect, I didn't need Google to cut my traffic that much to check 404s.

Obviously if you make double the money 2-3 months of less traffic is worth it but there's no telling what the h*ll will happen with Google and Panda.

Why shouldn't Google cut your traffic for 2 years, then your site will be even better, if 2 months made such a difference.