shafaki - 1:19 pm on May 7, 2005 (gmt 0)

David,

One of the reasons I posted my message and selected this specific subject line for it was to get STRONG responses and arguments against the view I presented. Such would certainly enrich the debate and make it super clear that content rich sites are the thing to aim for.

Unfortunately, I find your argument far from being so.

Search engines have improved vastly over the last few years, and so has people's ability to use them effectively.

Sure search engines have improved incredibly from their state in the past. I totally agree with this. But people's ability to use them effectively has actually decline over the years (this finding is backed by research). The reason behind this is that in the past, net citizens were composed largely of technically sophisticated people, but as the net expanded and more and more people came to use it, the less computer literate have entered the scene. This is an ongoing trend. (That's why the BIG guys are trying to make it easier and easier for things online, just think Blogger, think automatic installation instead of having to download and save a file first ... etc. The big guys got the message).

Your missing of this point made your whole argument build on an untrue thing, which makes it easily collapsible (your argument).

Webmasters that can't put in relevant keywords (it 'aint rocket science) aren't that serious about having their site visited.

Once again here, not all article writers have strong experience in SEO. Imagine an MD for instance writing articles in his field, which he is experienced in, but not having deep experience in SEO. Focusing more on his medical specialization and less on SEO will be normal for him. And I will still highly respect this person who has little SEO knowledge nonetheless.

They can't find the content pages in the top slots of the search BECAUSE OF the no-content scrapers, and not thanks to them. Nuke the lot of 'em and you'd find the content easier.

What if the content-rich sites do not show at all for such queries due to the search phrases being 'unexpected'?

Try searching G for "descriptions it job titles". This phrase is used a LOT by searchers, yet sites having IT Job Descriptions are not optimized for it. Take another example where searchers often misspell the word IT and write it "iit" instead. If your web site was about IT, would you optimize it for IIT? (Ponder on this question for a while). (If you were, then how will you go on optimizing it for IIT when it is actually about IT? If not, then you'll be loosing that traffic.)

I really do hope that someone out there give me a STRONG answer against the opinion proposed in this thread. I'm craving for a strong argument, a REAL one.