Yep, an article on Search Engine Optimization in the NYTimes this Sunday. Read it HERE. It’s a good piece that explains the kind of crap we’ve been having to deal with over the past several years: every day deleting spam messages from the Forum and spam accounts from the backend (= new accounts that exist solely to get links embedded in profiles onto the Web). Argh!
The Dirty Little Secrets of Search
By DAVID SEGAL
Published: February 12, 2011<snip>
TO understand the strategy that kept J. C. Penney in the pole position for so many searches, you need to know how Web sites rise to the top of Google’s results. We’re talking, to be clear, about the “organic” results — in other words, the ones that are not paid advertisements. In deriving organic results, Google’s algorithm takes into account dozens of criteria, many of which the company will not discuss.
But it has described one crucial factor in detail: links from one site to another.
If you own a Web site, for instance, about Chinese cooking, your site’s Google ranking will improve as other sites link to it. The more links to your site, especially those from other Chinese cooking-related sites, the higher your ranking. In a way, what Google is measuring is your site’s popularity by polling the best-informed online fans of Chinese cooking and counting their links to your site as votes of approval.
But even links that have nothing to do with Chinese cooking can bolster your profile if your site is barnacled with enough of them. And here’s where the strategy that aided Penney comes in. Someone paid to have thousands of links placed on hundreds of sites scattered around the Web, all of which lead directly to [your website]. ...
Edited to remove a link! 
