I really dislike when they claim that if your website falls victim to the "google sandbox", that it merely means your website is not "up to snuff". Some of the best info on the net has been provided by personal webpages from people who have little knowledge of web design and/or marketing.

On another note, I would like to be the first to say I am very dissapointed with Google on this Christmas Day, not having one dang christmas images, color or theme on their website. Google's themed graphics abound on "EARTH DAY" with ALT TEXT proclamations to boot... but on one of the biggest and most important days of the year, we see nothing at all and a sorry ALT TEXT of "happy holidays". Merry Christmas Yahoo! and Microsoft! I'll let Brin and Page celebrate their winter solstace.

Aaron great post as usual. But I don't quite follow what you mean by "rate of change". Are you suggesting that raw data may become more important over time?

Rate of change...

Think of the web as a bunch of channels within an attention economy. As more people adopt the various feedback mechanisms (say traditional content consumbers become content publishers) those at the top of the heap within their niches will be reinforced by many additional channels. and it won't just matter how many citations you have...it will also matter if you are growing in quality signals quicker or slower than those creating competing content channels