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Hi,

I wanted to pose a question

How soon do guys think itll be before author rank becomes a one of Googles major ranking factors?

From what I can see the way they have designed it signals that it is only matter of time, before they start using it as a major ranking factor...

And I have a question on Author ranks impact on the ability to sell a blog/site in the future. Surely if the blog is tied to an author(s) and the ranking of the site in the search engine is somewhat based on this authors author rank who is a part of the site/blog, then it becomes harder to sell the property if the author is not going to be a part of the property after the sale?.

I look forward to your responses on this,

You raise some very strong points there.

I especially liked the point on if the eCommerce site is in a niche area that not that much can be written about, then it should be easier to dominate that niche by producing all that content the niche requires.

I guess Google has finally caught up with the manual link tactics many eCommerce sites have been deploying for a long time. And by manual link tactics, I mean them actively going out there and building links on free properties (web 2.0 profiles ect) and so on.

And I agree with you on the fact that content has become the cost of doing business.

A final point one your last comment above, I feel the reason why many eCommerce sites feel they have no real other choice other than PPC, is due to the fact that although PPC costs, it provides them with the predictable traffic they need and is more metrics driven  - which I suppose appeals to eCommerce site owners whos primary goal is conversions, whereas producing content plays on the need to be more creative and strategic, so may not appeal to many of them quite so much.

But you also addressed this issue , by saying that they could very much hire the best bloggers they can, assuming they are an eCommerce site with the financial resources to do so. For the eCommerce sites that do not have the financial resources to have link worthy content produced, to them the companies/individuals that are offering hands off manual automatic link building campaigns, are still very attractive.