With the greater number of pages being indexed it is becoming harder to rank web sites according to traditional methods. Google is actively pursuing ways to make the searches more accurate using users input, in ways such as Google Notebook for example. Matt Cutts of Google has an in depth blog on BigDaddy that enlightens this point.

The BigDaddy Blog can be found here.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the blog describing what BigDaddy function is. When you compare it to the recent development of Google Notebook and other services out there such as furl, stumbleupon, and delicio.us you can see how having your web site getting 'note'ed, 'bookmarked', 'furl'ed, and 'stumbled upon' can help with your rankings.

"If your page is showing up as supplemental one day and then as a regular result the next, the most likely explanation is that your page is near the crawl fringe. When it's in the main results, we'll show that url. If we didn't crawl the url to show in the main results, then you'll often see an earlier version that we crawled in the supplemental results. Hope that helps explain things...Google is less likely to give those links as much weight now. That's the simple explanation for why we don't crawl you as deeply, in my opinion."

"You ask, I'm wondering how you gain relevant links, in some sectors, without reciprocating, or paying? Do you believe that rivals would give you a free one way link, lol?" My answer is that trying to force your way up to the top of search engines is in many ways not working in the most efficient way. To the degree that search engines reflect reputation on the web, the best way to gather links is to offer services or information that attract visitors and links on your own. Things like blogs are a great way to attract links because you're offering a look behind the curtain of whatever your subject is, for example." Google believes, as do I, that if we get more user input on if a web site is more valuable we can use that information to get more accurate search results. The 'votes' used in the past to rank a site valuable was done with links. The 'votes' used NOW to rank a site valuable are done with Google Notebook, delicio.us, furl, etc. (Although I strongly believe that linking will still remain a very strong point for ranking.)
            
In the past it was only a matter of time before people learned how to abuse the linking 'votes' by creating linking farms. Google combated this by taking link age, link number on the same page, linking relevance, linking from the same IP address, linking source, etc. to weed out the cheating links from the genuine links.

With this new way of ranking how valuable a web site is by personal notes, votes, stumbleupons, etc. dawns a new age on optimizing web sites. Soon people will think of ways to 'cheat' the system.

Hopefully, Google will be ready for the 'cheaters' out there with this new way of adding value to a site and I hope that this will bring more accurate search engine results.            

But like an ancient proverb, "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it!" I may find my ranking in Google in the top 5 for 'seo consultation' to drop because of this!

Making the world a better place for web sites,
Michael Rock
Web Ranking Consultants