The web is all about content, it's basically one large article directory. The task for a company like Google is to provide an efficient indexing system so we can connect with the information we are looking for in the fewest possible steps.
In the old days, when we bought our 'Encyclopedia Britannica', we'd flip to the front to find a broad index of content, then flip to the back to try and find a specific piece of content. It was and still is a pain trying to find something specific in a large hardcopy publication.
So obviously Google automates that task pretty well on the web. It can record billions of documents and serve up the most relevant to our needs in a few milliseconds.
However, by recording our specific surfing habits and combining the personal data it records about us with the  data taken from a website (via analytics or just simply from standard Google searches), it can match us with content which is even more relevant to our needs - or at least what Google determines to be most relevant to our needs.
So Google has become a very intelligent content indexing system, delivering more and more 'personalized' results based on our surfing habits, our demographic and the performance of the websites it records in its index.

It is no secret that one of the main technology hurdles for Google is duplicate content. But why should it care about duplicates if it's large enough and fast enough to index pretty much everything of worth?
Google uses relevance and authority to determine the degree of value of the content and hence the degree of value to the searcher. To do this reliably Google needs to know the source. As the author of a piece of writing I should have ultimate authority over everyone else who publishes it. If I'm using content as the ultimate arbiter of 'authority', hence 'value' I need to know who owns the content so I can give preference and prominence to the source and not to someone who has merely replicated it for their own self interest or gain. Its one of the most critical yardsticks that Google has to judge us by. If it gets the source wrong in its algorithm, all other measurements will result in a false outcome. It can't reward quality content fairly if it doesn't know who has authored it.

This isn't rocket science nor is it particularly new. It's also something that we don't hear Google making a big deal about, why? because they don't have and never will have a perfect working solution. But it's clear from some of the algorithm and policy changes during 2011 that Google is working hard to improve its chances of determining the true source of content.

The first step in a series of new steps was for Google to make a basic assumption about article directories, since they hold a lot of content and faired well under the old system of ranking. We've seen the results of Panda so it's easy to work backwards or reverse-engineer the thought process Google has gone through to arrive at its conclusion with respect to AD's. Article Directories contain primarily duplicate content, but not entirely, so Google must have factored other information into its decision to devalue AD's. If you look at the whole scenario it can give us valuable clues as to where things are headed.

I'm certain part of the thought process went like this -

Google HQ
"Ok, a lot of the web's duplicate content is coming from Article Directories and content farms"
"But it isn't all duplicate, some articles in eZine etc are 'original'"
"OK then, but generally speaking, what's the standard or quality of those 'original' articles?"
"Well, they're pretty poor, mostly, they kinda look a lot like other articles which we already know have duplicates, with a few semantic differences."
"Oh, so perhaps a lot of them are 'spun' from one of the multiple copies of an original?"
"It sure looks like it, so based on this, that and the other, lets demote the entire directory until we can figure out a better way of dealing with them. Sure, there'll be some blood-letting that we've gotten wrong, but we can come back and fix that later. Plus, we'll be sending out a strong message to the world.....lets make a sacrifice for the greater good of the web."

And in one fell swoop out came Panda, changing the whole lay of the land and the future web publishing.

So where does this leave us WRT content publishing, what are the rules, how do we play the game?

Google can't announce the new rules yet because they haven't finished writing them. It's in a state of flux, not in a static sense but in an evolutionary sense. In a way Google is just like an intelligent marketer trying to optimize its own business. It makes changes and it tests the results. It realigns based on measurement data then tests again. To stay at the top of its game, this process is perpetual, it has to be.

How does that affect you, or how will it? - First off, to hide behind 'well it's worked for me for the last 5 years so it must be OK' is like sticking your head in the sand and missing the whole point. iFrame cloaking worked for a while, IP cloaking/switching, Xrummer backlinking etc. These were all strategies that worked and have since been marginalized (or are heavily along the path to being) by the Google team.

But with a little forward thinking, some evaluation of what has happened in the past and some common sense, you can start to see the shape of what is coming along, hopefully in time to adapt.

And here it is -

There's a new system of page authority being worked out right now. It's ever evolving, but it has recently taken on a major set of changes. It now uses some re-hashed data from the old Page Rank system (back-linking) combined with new data that Google didn't have access to in sufficient quantity before, chiefly the introduction of user profiling data and website profiling data.

1 - User profiling data - we're seeing Google experiment with this in how it filters search results based on our surfing habits and demographics. The data it uses is extremely wide reaching and includes our social media interactions.

2 - Website profiling data - yes, analytics has been around for a long time, but there's now sufficient data to combine it with the user profiling data in point 1. Think about this very loose example - John Smith is interested in apples, but never oranges. When he finds the information he's looking for (i.e he doesn't repeat the same search) he spends on average of 65 seconds on a page. When he doesn't find the information he's looking for he spends an average of 7 seconds on a page before repeating the search. Apply what Google knows about the user-profile, the content of each web page and the analytics data of each page (it's all about apples and John never needs to know about oranges, the page contains 250 words which takes on average 65 seconds to read), and you can serve up something very specific to maximize John's Google experience. If that sounds far fetched it's because you're limiting the scope of your imagination. Google are doing it now, it's just still in the prototype stages.

3 - Old PR data - the old system of scoring back-links is in the middle of a major upheaval. Google is implementing relevance filters on all back-links to your site. It always has, but the parameters are changing. We've played the system, exploited the loopholes and Google is closing them down. And if you think you can't be penalized for what points at you, think again. Some of you will get on your soapboxes and say something like "if Google can penalize a site based on its back-links, I could start sending out spammy links to all my competitors and get them penalized". How basic is that. From the data Google collects about you and your website, it's able to predict which links are valid, determine which links it is uncertain about (neutralize) and take action on those links it knows have been fabricated with intent to mislead. It's a slow and ongoing process, the more data it collects the more precise the outcome of its calculations.

Each one of the 3 points encompasses the entire sphere of the web. They take into account how users interact with publishers and how publishers interact with users, it's pretty much a closed-loop system with an ever decreasing number of variables outside of Googles' access and/or control.

Now back to the original question "So where does this leave us, what are the rules, how do we play the game?".

We need to focus on what we can influence and not things we have no control over. At a basic level we need to ensure that we are recognized as the source for the content we publish and we need to stamp credibility on our content. We also need to exercise more control over who has access to our content and how it is used outside of our own website. Essentially, we need to take more responsibility over what we publish on the web.

But out of all of this, helping Google determine that you are the originator of your content is most critical.

Google can only determine the source of content if it has real-time indexing of the entire web, which obviously it does not have, nor is it anywhere close to having. The idea that you can post an article on your site, wait until it's indexed, then post it everywhere else, and Google recognizes you as the 'originator' is a complete fallacy. How can Google know you're the author if it only has a third of the web indexed at any one time? So the most valuable component in the Google algorithm is 'originator', but it's a variable that it cannot yet accurately determine on a page by page basis. It has minimized the opportunity for error by removing the relevance of websites whose primary function is to re-publish information, and it has provided us with canonical linking and REL author tags, which few of us can practically use. So there's still a hole in the most important parameter of the algorithm. But there are things we can do as publishers to fill the hole, to swing things in our favor.
Imagine that the parameter in the algorithm 'author' is weighted, perhaps on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being an absolute certainty that Google knows you're the originator of the content. So if you score high 90's, or even 100, all subsequent processing of the algorithm is numerically weighted in your favor.

There are simple ways to indicate that a page is the original, one which article directories and other 'syndication' sites cannot replicate. And no, it doesn't require that you use long and wordy articles, in fact you should produce shorter more relevant content since Google knows that the vast majority of people don't stick around on a page long enough to read 1500 words. Incidentally - many web publishers fail to realize the fact that the vast majority of people only spend enough time on a page to read 200-350 words, assuming your page is even relevant to them in the first place. We look at our analytics and see an average page view time of 1.2 minutes then continue to produce content that requires 10 minutes to read. What's up with that? We're writing for what we perceive Google to want and not our visitors. Google is now using that data against us. (I know there are exceptions, some of you 'engaging' writers can keep people entertained all the way through a 2500 word dissertation, but I'm talking about the masses here).

The way to get a '100' credit score for your work and authority for your website, and more traffic, is to encode every page on your website with an encrypted 'uniqueness key'. That is, to give Google something to look at which it knows cannot be recreated outside of your own website. To do that you need to abandon the old approach to content creation of 'set and forget'. The standard approach is to put out a 1000-1200 word essay with two images, a meta Title and Description, then publish it on your blog or website and walk away. Whilst that may always have some place on the web, it leaves Google with the dilemma of determining where that piece of content fits into the jigsaw puzzle, who owns it and therefore how to serve it up to a searcher. Also, Google knows the format is highly inefficient based on what I've said above about page view times. These 1000 word static text articles are not what people want to see. Most people write 1000 words and think they're impressing Google, but when you strip out all the words that google doesn't even consider, a lot of the time there's practically nothing left. And that works for the reader too. They're not absorbing enough data/information from the vast majority of web pages, so they leave without ever reaching the end.

So here's where I'm at -

What I'm seeing now is that a shorter and more concise 'interactive' article can rank much better than a 'set and forget' article with 1000-15000 words, if the article contains a high scoring Uniqueness Key.

If the page as a whole -

1 - Uses a high ratio of substance words to throwaway words.
2 - Integrates video
3 - Integrates more images
4 - Links out to authority resources (links to Google reference sites, WIKI and other non-commercial sites which are themed to the source content are precious).
5 - Integrates social media into the page (I've been doing some testing on creating a page, using a blog excerpt to point to the page, adding some blog comments via external sources etc and you can rank a 250 word page higher than a 1200 word page on the same subject just by following a simple formula).
6 - Incorporates Google + and FB likes for the specific page and not just the homepage
7 - Offers alternate formats for accessibility, like PDF, audio and audio/video versions of the specific page content.
8 - Shows some pattern of social bookmarking
9 - Offers users the option for textual interaction with the page

....then the page can achieve a high credit score, a high UK, and can rank well. If you throw one or two authority backlinks into the equation you can get the page to rank well even in competitive niches. You don't need 10,000 backlinks, just two or three.

In doing most, or all of the above, you're essentially creating a unique template for your work that cannot be replicated. It seems to be common knowledge that adding a video or something else non-static to a web page gets it ranked higher. Why do you think that is? - because of the above. You're creating an encryption code that cannot be cracked outside of your own website and you're giving Google a reliable yardstick for measuring your content and determining authorship. The more uniqueness you can apply to a page in the form of components which cannot be easily replicated outside of your website, the more 'bits' there are in your encryption code and the more 'secure' Google feels about your specific content. (The reward is Authority).

And before you think, "well then, I'll just grab some content from eZines and embed a few videos into it". Well that won't work. The textual content is still the key component, it will still be 'snippet-checked' against Google's index. The videos, audio, social media, external links etc are just solidifying the uniqueness of the footprint of that page on the web. If there's more social media interaction on an article or blog post, then that's creating an even broader authority footprint, almost eliminating the possibility of it being replicated elsewhere. And if the interaction keeps on happening, i.e it's continually changing in a unique way in Google's index, then you'll get a reward for freshness (not the bathing type).
Also, if you look at how the display of Google search results is evolving, you'll see that web pages are being rewarded for these efforts already, by Google displaying additional data on specific pages in the search results. If you have a forum website which is frequently refreshed and updated, you'll see additional listings for your forum posts which essentially pushes your competitors further down the SERP's. And there's more too, just take note of the changing format of the search results and you'll see what's coming along.

It might seem far-fetched, but it's happening now, I just don't think we've connected the dots as to how and why it's happening, exactly. If we can connect the dots then we've got most of the rules of the game and we can start to get good at playing it.

Think about the 9 points I've listed above (I'm sure there are many others). These cannot be manipulated to exploit Google, and that's what they're all about. It's a constant battle for them to eliminate rogue exploitation of their search results. Sure, you might get away with manipulating one or two of the elements but then you're respective credit score will only be 10 or 20. The more you can incorporate into your content, the higher your score will be.

So that will be my goal in 2012. Every piece of content I publish on my site will be unique and will pass on all the information that Google needs to determine that the content isn't and cannot be published elsewhere. Rather than spend a day writing a 1500 word article, I'll engage my visitors with 350 words of useful and succinct information, then provide them with a broad range of media types and additional resources to develop their understanding of the subject via whatever format they wish to pursue.

None of the above is anything new, we all knew about this early in 2011, but how many of us are actually doing it?