It was only the Demand Media hype pump program to generate controversy and create "demand" for their IPO that put all this stuff on radar.

My thoughts exactly, glad to see that others feel the same way :)

The online world is finally commercialized enough for larger companies to come in (or more like buy in) and speculate an exponential growth on their overvalued cyber-assets. Wall Street 2.0 anyone?

I know this is not a new or an uncommon phenomenon, but it seems like it's going to happen a lot more often in the coming years... and it will be interesting to see how Google is going to react to an overflow of high-profile players all pouring into the same business model on the back of national PR campaigns, with tens of millions to invest into online promotion to grow overnight.

My guess is that SEO is going to get more "restricted" in a way, with more and more weight leaning towards historical authority and user satisfaction (do I get a +1 for stating the obvious!?)... and as mentioned in the other post, content farms are here to stay... so stalk up on those indexed pages and watch AdSense revenues (as well as AdWords costs unfortunately) continue to grow exponentionally and hit record highs year after year.

P.S. - Just joined this community and I love it, Aaron I'd love to shake hands in person :) I thoroughly enjoy your long posts, and find the contributing members to be very well educated and a pleasure to interact with.

P.S.S - Why did my comment "preview" button disappear!? :(