Be careful what you wish for! Link analysis was the single biggest innovation the search industry has seen in the 15 yrs. I've been doing this. PPC was big in that it solved the monetization issue, not the search quality issues. Links were citation/votes when Google released the algo that changed the net. People linked to stuff or research that mattered to their users (endorsements), not, because they were manipulating a SE algo. Googles problem up until recently was the link analysis seemed to be the whole algo to many SEOs. Now, that analysis IMO, is not so much evident in the blended results. I agree with Mike Grehan and believe in a few years that a lot of SEO will be very ineffective. I don't agree with him on the SEO Textbook being obsolete... just the chapters on reciprocal linking, linking schemes and other linking techniques more suited to the promotion 101 book. SE's will IMO, always be weighting Titles, copy and other appropriate on page "elements" because that is the core of relevancy, the rest is a crapshoot and will always be a moving target because of unwanted manipulation by the tykes who'd rather build a crappy brochure site and link the crap out of it rather than building something that actually deserves to be in the top position because of the content.

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