Distilled

1786171869 | Amazon behind private gas plant for new data centers | https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/amazon-behind-massive-private-gas-210211828.html | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49219445

1786121329 | Scoop: Amazon Is Behind One of the Largest Planned Gas Power Plants in the US | https://www.distilled.earth/p/scoop-amazon-is-behind-one-of-the

1786014051 | AWS eyes potential data center development at 4.5GW natural gas plant in Pennsylvania | https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-eyes-potential-data-center-development-at-45gw-natural-gas-plant-in-pennsylvania/

1786181141 | 'Better ways to use gas': Amazon finances massive US plant for data centres | https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3363393/amazon-finance-huge-us-gas-plant-data-centres

1786202472 | Amazon plans massive Texas AI campus and an enormous gas power plant | https://www.chron.com/news/article/amazon-texas-data-center-nation-s-polluting-power-22380078.php

1784098800 | Amazon to install hundreds of gas-fired generators at Bucks County data center site | https://whyy.org/articles/amazon-data-center-bucks-county-pa-gas-generators-impact/

1786140583 | Amazon Is Building America's Biggest Fossil Fuel Plant to Power AI | https://heatmap.news/energy/amazon-gw-ranch

1786173935 | Amazon Backs 7.65-GW Gas Plant in Texas to Power New AI Data Center Campus |…

I hope this doesn't seem self serving, but seomoz.org has some of the highest quality information you can find on SEO. In addition to that, I'd suggest articles on http://searchengineland.com/ - they offer high quality content and news in the industry. Anything written by Vanessa Fox on SEL is usually great.

Guides like Excel for SEO shows some of the basic stuff we do:
http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/

For high level patent / research based SEO, nobody does it better than http://www.seobythesea.com/ (his URLs are ugly, but his content is great)

For specific beliefs on how the algo works, this is a good resource:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

SEOmoz has webinars and a PRO Q&A. Distilled.net also offers videos of our conferences.

As for books, the best I've read are Art of SEO, which is co-written by Rand, and SEO Secrets by Danny Dover (formerly of SEOmoz, now at AT&T) which talks more about the consulting side. The problem with books is that stuff can go out of date quickly. If you're reading a book that talks about PageRank sculpting, for example, it's dated.

Other great sites:

http://www.seobook.com/ - high level opinions and analysis of industry issues

http://www.seroundtable.com/ - recap of industry news and forums

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ - lots of tactical articles

Things I've written for…

Haha the article that just won't die!

For those who are interested, there was a follow up to the article here: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/google-stop-playing-the-jig-is-still-up-guest-post/

And Dan Clarke did some independent tests here:
http://www.danclarkie.co.uk/can-the-googlebot-read-javascript-ajax-cookies.html

This was all back in Oct - Dec of '11. Basically we learned that Googlebot handles JavaScript and AJAX pretty much like a browser.

When it comes to AJAX, it appears to index the content under the destination URL of the XHR in some cases, while indexing it as part of the page making the XHR in other instances. Something about the way the AJAX request is made causes Google to treat it like a 302 redirect at times.

Standard JS window.location redirects also appear to be treated as equivalent to 302 redirects.

@dsl - I suspect you're correct. The Google Toolbar, Chrome's Opt-In Program, The Search Quality Program, and now Google Analytics Data (since the TOS change) are probably all being used to train the behavior of Googlebot when interacting with elements on a page.

Google also has plenty of patents related to computer vision, and their self-driving car is road-worthy... so processing DOM renders of the page ala Firefox's 3D View/Tilt is probably small potatoes for them.

As always with SEO it is dangerous to make broad sweeping statements. What works for a small local website, doesn't have to work for a big casino/travel website and vice versa.

The advice I gave was sincere though. In practice I see many businesses aiming for links, when their content just isn't up to par. Quality content alone (without links) is enough to rank in many niches. If you get to the hyper-competative SERPS, sure, you can't escape link building or doing most of the work in-house. Droll: If you are about to enter a hyper-competative niche, you should already know what you are doing, else there is little chance you succeed.

For me, in practice, creating accessible content is still one of the best things start-ups can do. Blog about two times a week and you will rank for it, you don't necessarily need backlinks. If you got an inaccessible site with poor content, you need (probably to buy) backlinks to make a dent.

Disclaimer advice: Never stake your business model on uncustomized broad SEO advice. Especially when there are plenty of authoritative sources for sound start-up SEO advice like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM

http://vimeo.com/39473593

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/seo-for-start-ups/

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/

Authoritarian? Our society is already far from perfect.

IPCC: We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report. Cutting carbon from transport and energy ‘not enough’ IPCC finds. Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/03/ipcc-land-use-food-production-key-to-climate-crisis-leaked-report

IPCC: Slashing Emissions From Meat Crucial to Climate Action

https://sentientmedia.org/ipcc-report-food-system/

Plant-Based Lifestyles Now ‘Imperative’ For Survival, IPCC Climate Expert Says

https://plantbasednews.org/news/plant-based-lifestyles-imperative-survival-climate-expert/

How Meat and Fossil Fuel Producers Watered Down the Latest IPCC Report. Scientist authors recommended more plant-based diets and phasing out all fossil fuels. But those recommendations didn't make it into the final report.

https://www.distilled.earth/p/how-meat-and-fossil-fuel-producers

The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

https://qz.com/ipcc-report-on-climate-change-meat-industry-1850261179

> Were they designed intentionally as such or this that an outcome of history?

Oh, it's definitely intentional. Sure, pre-industrial cities had narrow streets that were poorly suited for car traffic, so you could say that walkable cities were technically the default.

But a lot of those European cities were intentionally changed towards car transportation in the middle of the 20th century, when cars became widespread and a symbol of post-WW2 wealth, widening street and turning historical squares into parking lots.

And most of those cities were turned back into walkable (or bikable) cities since the '80s onwards, by banning cars and reusing the parking lots for other purposes.

Here's [0] an article about the Netherlands's intentional policy in that regards, and here's [1] a more recent effort in Spain. A lot of Reddit's popular "then and now" posts show this off [2].

[0] https://www.distilled.earth/p/how-the-netherlands-built-a-biking

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/barcelona-launches-10-year-plan-to-reclaim-city-streets-from-cars

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cv555r/my_hometown_then_and_now/