My $0.02: how many people search for "Google" at all other SEs? If Ask is to be believed: http://about.ask.com/en/docs/2008/topqueries.shtml - a LOT!!!!

If your a unique, and go to Google quickly, you get counted for both, but really, is the guy in a $7,000 suit really an Ask unique I mean, COME ON!

...and to the central theme that "Google pays the very people it fughts to arm themselve's for the fight against the people who pay them" I say...

My flippin' head hurts!

Naoise - what over-thought nonsense!

Steps:

1. Get list of all known link buyers. (already exists)
2. Find current bought terms.
3. Find pages that link to current buyer using these terms.
4. Find other external links on page.
5. Use this new data to find other sites these new people bought links on, by matching term and URL.
6. Go to step 1.

Simple, easy, effective.

OK, so allow me to think for you :)

"Do you think that every link buyer has been identified and exists on a list somewhere. ...But no, there is no comprehensive list of people/sites who buy links, not at googleHQ, not anywhere."

I love poeple that "know" the unknowable ;)

But who cares? That is the fallacy that 100% is required, and amounts to a one word argument: "comprehensive". A database can consist of one entry, so if Google know of one, single link buyer, that'sa da database.

All you need to find paid links is:

1. A database of links and URLs, aka the Google Index.
2. One known bought link.

If we make the (rather accurate) assumptions that bought links:

1. Use the same link text repeatedly for the same URL.
2. Exist on pages with other bought links.

The pattern matching is trivially easy. Find said paid link, find all pages that have the same link (same anchor, same URL) and then find other links on those pages that have the same traits. Triv-i-al.

"What about the natural linking caught up in this web that your system would weave? How do you determine if they are innocent or not?"

1. *I* don't do anything. I am a man with a Mac. I am simply speculating as to what SEs might do, and addressing crazy, convoluted conspiracy theories ;)
2. You assume it matters that "innocents" are caught, or that payment is the issue. it isn't. Mass, similar links that add no value to the algo are. Paid link / anchor text spamming and "natural" link spamming aka linkbait are equally useless, so who cares if payment was involved?
3. Ultimately it's the wrong question: Who cares if a few innocent are caught if the results improve? This isn't a court of law, it is a relevance test, and 90% improvement for 10% loss is improvement.

Now, see, I'm all for convoluted ideas, simplicity through convolution is my personal motto, but the simplest answer is always the best place to start, until it proves inneffective, like how early SEs simply used the keyword tag, and now they are hugely complicated.

Booo!!!! That makes no sense! 

Don't make good content instead... No answer!

The world changes. You can't predict how effectively, so don't try. The argument "the world will change therefore" is pointless. "The world IS therefore", however, makes sense!

Wow!!! Can you send me a signed autograph IncrediBill? Oh no, maybe you can send me an "I outted Dotbot" T-shirt, likethe old Dallas "I shot JR" Shirts. No, no, I GOT IT, how about one that says "FIRST" - that is GOLD!

Hehehe, OK, I'm getting silly now, but as a heterosexual man, the whole concept of "outting" makes me shiver. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I am going to out every bot I can find, but I reckon GayBot should be first. (too far)?)

To be fair to IncrediBill, he is alright, smart and knows his stuff.

But as the old expression goes, you lie down with Doug, you get fleas (and no, that isn't a typo but tihs is :P).

Not to be a pedant, but there are three steps:

1. Crawl.
2. Parser - this takes something and looks for meaning, e.g. title, links etc.
3. Indexing - this puts the new, meaningful data somewhere.

One can do any of these steps without tother, and even some stages multiple times (think - multiple parsers).

"Google’s policy on paid links is impossible to enforce. Or at least it’s impossible to enforce fairly and consistently."

Repalce "Google" with "Government" and "paid links" with "taxes" and you realise how dumb that argument is. 

Well said, and a quality return to actual information for once, although, is twitter part of SEM now (hahaha, keeping the hate alive).

Heheheheh - Rae said F#$@ing teehee teehee. Oh, and Nazis - nbothing specific about Nazis - just... Nazis.

Does that mean the discussion is over now thast we have a jeuvenile comment from a post-adolecent child, and a commetn about NAzis? If nbot, well FIRST! OK, I am all out.

Am I the only one bored by this? 

I never ever thought I'd say this, but I long for the days when lolcats were where it was at!

I am trying really hard to understand how 45 people found that article interesting or informative.

Is sphinn now about voting for theories we like, rather than the quality of the writing? Cause the article didn't really add much to mmy knowledge!

Unrealated: WTF does it require 50 characters to desphinn? Spam is 4!

The most important thing about havign clients is realising that you are paid to work with each person differently. Too many people are simply incapable of varying their approach.

An SEO consultant is first and foremost in client services, and secondly in SEO, e.g. you have to do a lot of stuff that is irrelevant to SEO, adn usually this is more important than the actual SEO you do. If you can't live with that fact, go do something else. 

I desphunn this, not because I didn't enjoy or agree with the article, but because, well, the whole genre of article should be avoided.

It is sad an artuicle like this needed to be written, but that doesn't change the fact that these sort of "meta-discussions" are the problem, no matter what side they support.

So, lets put this to bed, eh? All of it. The pro, the con, the indifferent. Lets just go back to learning and sharing, and not talking about how we learn and share, and who is right, wrong, mean, nasty, a victim, victimised or anything else.

Can we? Pretty please? For Mikey :looks all coquettish:

You only need one rewrite rule: run everything that doesn't exist (e.g. ignore css, flash files, images etc) through a single script (in teh case of WPO index.php).

Efficiency is a myth, as computers are fast, and people time is slow. Putting redirects into .htaccess has these consequences: 

1. Requires the testing of a whole extra thing.
2. Forces someone to learn the intricacies of a new language (Apache config rules) that are not likely to be retained in their "ram", as they'd be worked on so infrequently.
3. Causes there to be two palces errors can occiur (.htaccess and the scripting languages).
4. Takes extra time to debug.
5. Forces people to read through whole new sets of documentation, foten with unfamiliar terms, to debug what should be trivial isues.

Do what wordpress do and run everything through one script, and make your life easy.

Never, ever use .htraccess for redirects is my personal advice. Why bother when you can use mod_rewrite and PHP to do the work?

IMHO, .htaccess should be for configuration, and scripting should be for logic, whioch redirects are. That way, you KNOW where the issue is (with the PHP), rather than having to guess (scripting or .htaccess???)

Also, with PHP, you can set up a system to handle and check (put requests in a DB, email yourslef links etc etc), that .htaccess isn't desigtned for.

And oner last benefit: people are good with PHP, but .htraccess is infrequently used and therefore not as easy to guarantee the quality of work.

My $0.02 anyway.

Michael is right to a degree, but the issue ios so complicated, why bother? You'd be better off trying to solve world peace.

"Also, women's fight for more power evens out the balance of power, while men doing the same unbalances it."

So what you are saying, halfdeck, is that my nephew, who is one, has to pay a price for the advantage his great, great grand daddy had? Seems a bit crap to me!

Worse, you could be seen to be arguing that society benefits not from the best person, but the one that "balances". Personally, I think the best person should win, and we should all be colour, gender, sexuality and religiously blind.

"Power inbalance can obviously lead to one side getting a very short end of the stick."

And Iraq shows how flipping the inbalance is hardly any better. Be very careful of prescribing a cure that is worse than the illness.

The only system that is reasonable, IMHO at least, is a true meritocracy. That means everyone gets by purely on merit, and there is no artificial attempt to right an imbalance, to change the playing field, which lets get real, is a weird concept, no matter how you spin it.

Now, how we deal with inequalities beyond merit, such as the quality of schooling and access to infrastructure I don't know, but I can't believe that allowing the same thing to perpetuate in reverse is an improvement. In fact, I'd argue we are headed for a terrible backlash that is way worse if we continue down that path.

"The results from touchgraph.com for Sphinn are very damning."

Damning in what way? Is sphinn going to hell?

This site belongs to someone. They have the right to do whatever. Why doesn't Edward start his own sphinn if it matters so much to him? Reddit's code is free (as in beer AND speech), so any excuse is moot.

"It doesn't matter. It's the law in Singapore"

Jill, stop being such a sensible pragmatist! I just don;t understand why people think the web is like a country, in that we all get a say, and not a house, where the person who owns it holds sway.

You can tell someone all you like that thier taste in curtains is terrible, but ultimately, it is their house, and they can choose all the uglyarse decorations they like!