[graeme]

....I wasn’t saying security by obscurity only applies to computers. I was saying it’s not the right concept for webspam.

Once an algo change is put into practice, it’s fairly easy for the seo industry to see what it is. It is no longer obscure!

But if you have advance notice of a change, you can react in advance, much like you can trade in advance of stock price moves if you have insider information.

[madsbuch]

Neither stock pricing or search rankings should be seems as a game. Your perspective is adversarial. Please, for the sake of humanity, let's try to be more ambitious than this.

Stock pricing should, in its core, be about valuing an asset.

Search rankings should, in its core, be about providing most relevant material to a query.

[graeme]

People absolutely are adversarial in these situations. Google rankings are valuable, so people try to game them, and google tries to fend them off with algorithm changes.

You can’t wave a wand to stop that. I’m describing the world as it is, not advocating how it ought to be.