Goes to my good friend, Andrew Goodman. Andrew is talking about the personalisation of search results, and makes good points about when searchers see vastly different results depending on their own personalised algorithmic recipes, then seo will turn into a whole different ballgame.

I'm not sure sliders are the answer because only it's likely that only power-users will bother with them, although Yahoo's Mindset is a very good implementation. Will most users notice it, I wonder?

Also, like Andrew, I've long had problems with the idea that providing "quality" content in the form of general, keyword-laden articles is somehow desireable from a marketing perspective. Often, it is more desireable to answer a question succinctly, especially if the visitor wants to "buy now!". The key is knowing what the user wants and delivering it.

For example, yesterday I searched Google for a local panelbeater. I got a search result from a local directory. That page contained paid directory listings for local panel beaters.

Quality content? Yes. The directory page answered my question and solved my problem quickly. Any "helpful" articles? No, and if there had been I probably would have clicked back. I'm not interested in how to panelbeat a car, or the methods of any one panelbeater. I want a list of merchants, their email addresses and their phone numbers. My personal slider would have been way to the commercial side, pushing "helpful" articles down into oblivion.

Horses for courses.