You can learn a lot about how the search results will change based on recent changes that have been made and by seeing what tests the engines are running. As SEOs we track the algorithms quite intensively, but the search result display is just as important. Google allows webmasters to see what search tests they are currently performing via Google Experimental Search.

Google bought YouTube, but is struggling with ironing out ad revenue shares and advertising. What is the easiest way for Google to fix these issues? Integrate YouTube and Google Video directly into Google's search results.

Using what legal loopholes they may and something they call universal search, you can now listen to music videos directly from Google.com search results. This creates a marketplace that many businesses will need to be in to stay relevant, destroys a whole vertical of web spam, AND allows Google to monetize the organic search results (via YouTube). If you think video is a passing fad you bet wrong, but if you are doing it you are best off branding your videos to be associated with your domain name and uploading them to YouTube. Eli offered tips on how to make $1,000 a month re-purposing video, but now the number is more like $20,000.

Sure Google has done many YouTube users wrong, but if you need exposure, Google turned back the clock on SEO. Top ranking have never been easier. All you need to succeed is to format your content in video and upload it to YouTube.

Tim O'Reilly compares Google and Amazon to offline companies:

If Google or Amazon were your bank or credit card, they'd let you know which merchants had the best prices for the same products, so you'd be a smarter shopper next time. They'd let merchants know what products were popular with people who also bought related products. They'd help merchants stock the right products by zip code. They'd let you know when you were spending more on dining out than you have set in your family budget. They'd let you know when you were approaching your credit limit, with a real-time fuel gauge, not just a "Sorry, your card has been declined."

Universal search mixes videos and news in the organic search results and recommends other verticals at the top of the search results. And Google is testing a broader array of layouts.

By making search richer you have less reason to leave Google. Google started with targeted text ads, but it is even better if they can combine their targeting with trusted brands and offers while making their ads look like a useful piece of content in any format.

Gord Hotchkiss recently posted about how he thought personalization was Google's trump card in social search. DigitalGhost noticed that Yahoo! hired some of the best sociology professors in the world, including Duncan J. Watts.

Bill Slawski recently highlighted that the original goal of PageRank was to:

...be useful for estimating the amount of attention any document receives on the web since it models human behavior when surfing the web

Google has a personalized home page, recommends gadgets, added many verticals to their organic search results, and biases the search results to your interests. With Google and other engines adding more content types directly to the search results, and adding more ways to search through it, the need for many of the niche communities diminishes. The social communities built on strong brands or bias will want central editors. Communities built on other weaker commonalities will wither.

Many of the smaller social search plays will get buried under their own weight. At this point, their page count will increase faster than their authority does, and as their outbound traffic drops so will their interest and authority. In other words, I think most of the social search plays are at best a fad.

DaveN offers his recovery plan for a recent Google algorithm which has affected the rankings of many sites engaged in buying and selling links.

Key points from Dave's post and comments:

• DaveN focuses on the importance of building topical and trusted links before reaching into the outlier parts of the web. Older and more trusted sites can then loop back to buying lower quality links to shore up their rankings for important keywords.

• Links from high quality trusted blogs are a more effective way to buy / build links than links that have obvious footprints associated with being bought in a group of other links.
• Dave also noted that in the past people who bought links may have got hit, and link sellers might have got their outbound link passing ability blocked, but this is the first time Google actively lowered the rankings of link sellers.

are market timing, passion, and a unique data source. If you have none of those you are screwed. Of course you can get by well with only one of them for a long time, but the more of them you have the more sustainable your business model will be.