• Mashable, Monday, March 7, 2011 10:30 AM

Tommy Swanson, serial digital entrepreneur and social media maven at fundraising company KMA, says new search engine algorithms have tried to make it harder for search-engine optimizers to game the system. But it's an arms race and SEO's always find a way around it. Nowadays search engines are more likely to focus on relevant links from well-trafficked sites, rather than keywords and the like, as a way to get around SEO's manipulating their pages to get top ranking. But SEO's have figured that out, too, with "white hat SEO" and "black hat SEO" techniques.

The next step for search engines, he says, will be the "You" Factor, with search engines moving toward a user-focused algorithm that is based in learning individual user preferences. Humans are, after all, harder to manipulate than a computer-based algorithm.

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