You can read a lot about what search engineers want by looking at how the search results change. You can learn a bit more by listening to how they try to guide / influence / manipulate the market while engaging in discourse. And you can learn a lot more by reading their guidelines for how they expect people to rate search quality.

The reasons that the internal communication documents are so powerful are

• they do not discuss search from "in an ideal world" approach, but cover the current marketplace from a pragmatic standpoint solving real issues
• the documents may display algorithmic holes that require manual intervention
• the documents may show clues as to the hints search engineers give raters to quickly infer quality and relevancy
• the documents show issues or relevancy infractions that merit a lower relevancy rating
• the documents show how ratings change based on the quality and availability of information on the topic
• how something that is considered spam in some instances is considered fine if it is associated with a large well known brand
• how things that are relevant in some verticals are irrelevant in others if Google runs a competing offering
• the current documents are the result of years of back and forth communication between quality raters and search engineers

For organic search junkies the Google Gods have tossed us another gift. An SEO Black Hat member discovered an April 2007 Google Evaluation Guidelines document, referenced here.

In April 2007 Yahoo! Music did offer lyrics, but the official Google query evaluation guidelines from that time-frame stated

Exceptions (Scraped Content that is not Spam) Lyrics, poems, ringtones (that the user programs rather than downloads), quotes, and proverbs have no central authority. When you see pages with this content, you cannot judge it to have been copied, and the pages should not be assigned a Spam label. Unfortunately, some content is written specifically for Spam pages and you will not find it on another source.

Although you may be convinced that the intent is to deceive, if the content makes sense and appears original, you will not be able to label such pages Spam.

In a sense, if a spammer or copyright violator is the only person providing the information online for free it is not considered spam, even if it would have been deemed spam by the traditional guidelines. The same is likely true if Google is trying to work on business negotiations to own that content directly (how could they state there are no central authority sites for music lyrics when sites like Yahoo! Music offer them?).

Because Google has not partnered up with the record labels to create a Google database of lyrics somehow those copyright violations are deemed acceptible even if they would have been judged as spam under Google's typical guidelines. And, of course, after Google creates a relationship to get those lyrics hosted on Google.com, many of those lyrics sites will indeed be deemed as spammers.

In other words, spam is only spam if it does not help Google achieve its business objectives. Who cares about the laws. Good to know.

You can compare the current query evaluation and rater document to the 2003 versions I referenced here and here. And the 2007 document has been leaked online.

• My buddies over at Prospect MX made a cool link building chart.
• Great article about the rapid rise and fall of Geosign.
• Rae on why you can't just rely on content quality to do your marketing for you.
• Search Engine Strategies running a series of advertorial only sessions. Eeek.
• Wired considered it spamming when Search Engine Land mentioned that people can submit articles to the Wired How-to Wiki. That same Wired now offers a guide on how to 'Google Bomb' an Enemy. For those scoring at home, Wired does not really care about spam...they just want controversy and pageviews.
• Why Google's surprising paid click data are less surprising - insightful article by comScore about how Google is intentionally monetizing fewer search results.

As free and infinite competition erodes the value of weak connections, a key to sustainably selling art is to reach out to 1,000 true fans:

The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

Seth mentioned how Bruce Springsteen built true fans over the years.

Even if you currently do not view yourself as an artist, to still be selling information online in 5 years, you will need to become one. Last September I posted Publishers Will Become Interactive Media Artists, which explains the shift that is taking place.

Recent University of Iowa research concluded that blissfully ignorant shoppers are happier with their choices:

"We found that once people commit to buying or consuming something, there's a kind of wishful thinking that happens and they want to like what they've bought," said assistant professor of marketing Dhananjay Nayakankuppam. "The less you know about a product, the easier it is to engage in wishful thinking. But the more information you have, the harder it is to kid yourself. This can be contrasted with what happens before taking any action when people are trying to be accurate and would prefer getting more information to less."

Which is worth thinking about when you aim to sell something. Sometimes the mystery is part of the appeal. Sure you want to answer many common questions to aid the perception of value, but sometimes a vague answer that allows wishful thinking to wonder is better than concrete answers that kill the imagination.

One of the things that holds back many semi-successful people who do not fully appreciate their own value is trying to answer everything possibly before the sale, which focuses too much time and effort on non-customers, while killing the imagination of legitimate prospects.

Update: In the comments NickB mentioned this TED talks video by Dan Gilbert.

• He highlights that unlimited choice, excessive fear, and unrestrained ambition kill happiness.
• We often vote against happiness because we think that given more choices and more time to debate our options we will like the outcome more. For most trivial matters the opposite is typically true.
• Another interesting tidbit is that amnesiacs who did not remember what specific gift they were given liked it more after they were given it (even if they did not remember that they owned it).

Watch this video...it's great stuff.

The Federal Reserve is somewhat like a market maker, or at the very least a market influence, on the value of currency. Google acts in a similar value, placing value on and evaluating the value of information and collections of information.

Reading this blog post about Ben Bernanke and replace words like credit and inflation with paid links and search spam and you can see (and perhaps even respect) how Google manipulates the press, why Google's guidelines are often forced to be removed from reality, and search engineer editorial action is often harsh beyond reason.

Here is an excerpt from the blog post about Ben Bernanke:

The last time a slowing economy failed to moderate prices was the 1970s. Even as the economy slid into recession, we had major spikes in the prices of energy, food, clothing.

What is particularly worrisome to me is that as we have slashed interest rates 225 basis points, consumer loans -- mortgages and revolving credit -- have actually moved higher.

Gentleman, this is a major problem. And our internal, non-public projections forecast it is only going to get worse for the next 4 quarters . . .

Paying a PR firm is not much different than buying PageRank, other than it perceived by Google as being cleaner.

And if you are big into economic stuff here is some more good stuff...

First, Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report [PDF] offers a lot of great business strategies and insights. If you have never read any of his letters, make sure to read from the heading on page 5 or 6 about Business - The Great, the Good and the Gruesome right on through to the end of that section a couple pages later. You can also read Warren's older reports here.

Nouriel Roubini on The Current U.S. Recession & the Risk of Systemic Financial Crisis [PDF] offers a bearish outlook on housing:

This is the worst housing recession in US history, and there is no sign it will bottom out any time soon. At this point it is clear that US home prices will fall between 20% and 30% from their bubbly peak, that would wipe out between $4 trillion and $6 trillion of household wealth. While the subprime meltdown is likely to cause about 2.2 million foreclosures, a 30% fall in home values would imply that over 10 million households would have negative equity in their homes and would have a big incentive to use "jingle mail" (i.e. default, put the home keys in an envelope and send it to their mortgage bank).

Some of the early lending institution losses are being socialized by inflation and other sources

Countrywide - an institution that was more likely insolvent than illiquid - has been bailed out with public money via a $55 billion loan from the FHLB system, a semi-public system of funding of mortgage lenders.

And this is altering the online economy heavily.

• CountryWide cut their online display ad budget by ~ 60% from December to January.
• LendingTree swung to an operating loss of $508.1 million in the fourth quarter. In early February LendingTree killed many of their affiliate relationships. Affiliates should be a low risk channel, so how healthy can their other ad channels be?

A few years ago credit card companies rewrote the bankruptcy laws, but mortgages have not yet been re-written to favor corporate interests. Nouriel Roubini highlights further risks associated with house price depreciation:

What is happening is just the consequences of rational economic behavior. In most US states mortgages are non-recourse loans; thus, if a home owner defaults on its mortgage then banks take over the collateral - the home - via foreclosure but once that happens it cannot go after the borrower for any difference between the value of the original mortgage and the current value of the property.