This is good news for all those who maintain credible websites and have struggled to maintain high search engine ranks against the sheer mass of crappy Adsense pollution that ruled that space for so long. Slowly, one by one we have seen them get slapped into oblivion as Google becomes more and more sophisticated at defining crap and catching these morons.
But it does make you wonder – this patented system of ranking a website by the number of inbound links is what has kept Google the undisputed king of search engines for so long is now almost redundant. Doesn’t that mean Google will lose it’s advantage over the rest of the field?
It will be an interesting couple of years as the peer endorsement through website links all but fades away and is replaced more and more with the perceived value of a website to visitors. I expect to see software applications that mimic the patterns of visitors on a website, increasing the average time people spend on sites or perhaps that is what all the unemployed Indian link builders will be doing in the future.
But the one thing that will always be hard to cheat is good original content. I doubt there will ever be a substitute for it.
For those who love the science of SEO, the SEOmoz report is comprehensive and a good read, though very academic, as you would expect from such an organization.