Interesting thoughts, Garrett and interesting thread over at Cre8.

I have posted a few replies to messages here recently taking a slightly different slant on it, using the gambling analogy rather than the whitehat/blackhat approach.

There are a number of speculated/hypothesized new parts to the Google ranking algorythm (eg HillTop. Local PR, TopicSensitive PR, stemming, latent semantic indexing; better analysis of the use of 'natural' language; etc) as well as an apparent more sophisticated anaylsis of links (eg link schemes; reciporcal links; off-theme links; affiliate links) - all of them have smart people supporting them, but just as many opposing them.

Because we do not know what or if Google have really done (and Google want it that way), we have to find out where the "line in the sand" between black hat and white hat SEO is.

In this context the average webmaster has to make a judgement call about where that line is - so if they want to "push the envelope", you are in effect taking a gamble on what Google have done with the algorithm, the possiblity that you have crossed over the "line in the sand", the possibility of being detected and the consequences of being detected - its a gamble .... cost and consquences vs benefit. ie what Mr Johns calls "Risk balanced and risk managed techniques"

CBP