Dark Future For traditional Search engines

Traditional search engines will become obsolete soon if they don't take care of their back link strategy.

Ohh that's interesting!!

Can you kindly elaborate on this.

Whats your suggestion to them?
What they should do to repair (as you are saying that they need to take care) of their back link strategy?

I have written a blog post on it.But this forum doesn't allow url for newbie.Whatever, Search Engine like Google rely on back links a lot for Ranking a Page.And a better site can fall behind not for trying to get backlinks.We already started to get Poor search result from Google sometimes.Newsweek has published an article on it on Nov 5 edition.
In third generation search engine their will be no importance on backlink.I am sure.Because back links can be generated without reciprocal links.

Ah, so you were wanting to make your first contribution a handy link to your blog?

So what would you suggest is a better method for determining relevance? Any ranking factor can be manipulated, be it on page or off page, so you're always going to see situations whereby an otherwise good web page has little SE presence because the webmaster is unable/unwilling to work the SE algorithms to their advantage. But it's no different to the non-internet world where a potentially great business fails because it doesn't market itself properly. Commerce has been around for hundreds of years, and that still hasn't managed to work out the inequalities.

Bear in mind that the principal of using back links to determine relevance was what made Google so successful so quickly. If a website is that good, it will naturally acquire these back links without having to actively seek them. I don't see Matt Cutts adding his site to directories, or submitting articles to article submission sites, etc but his blog still manages to attract plenty of links.

Seriously, I would love to hear what alternatives you'd suggest for these 3rd gen search engines.

Mate, I think you have misconception about back links.
First of all Google always give listing to the most relevant sites not the most optimized sites.
Back Links from quality and relevant sites are generally evidence of the relevancy of a site.
Back Links from quality and relevant sites without reciprocal links are the most solid evidence of the relevancy of the site.
If a site is very much relevant with a search term then it will not be in behind.By any how it will come in a good ranking.This is what I feel.
And till now I think lots of people are satisfied with the Google search results.

To JaqNet:
No technology can last for ever.Once upon a time it was possible to get a higher position in search results by keyword stuffing in meta tag and in content,With hidden text,doorway pages etc.
Search algorithm has to be changed for abusing that algorithm from webmasters.Back link is going on a that way.
Billion $ business of Google depends on their search.Google always have to improve their search algorithm not only for searchers but also for their business.
I haven't said Google is not giving most relevant search results in most cases.People have started to complain in some cases.These few case is arising because back link is misguiding the bots.If you have enough time please read Newsweek(Nov 5)

To new_seo:
When a search engine count on back links they consider three things in order relevance,quality and quantity.I know a back link is only counted when it is relevant.The rest of job is done by quality and quantity.In most cases it is successful till now.
But some webmasters always intend to abuse the search algorithm as they have done past with keyword stuffing and other techniques.If a search engine neglect the reciprocal links still their are ways for webmasters to acquire back links with link exchange not with each other but among themselves.
So always there is a risk for bots to calculate rank of a page with the back links.

Firstly SE not neglecting reciprocal links,they are giving less importance.
What you are talking about is 3 way or 4 way or .... link exchange process.
Specially 3 way link exchange is a way of getting one way links for a particular site, but in the whole process one site will be effected and that the site which is giving outbound links only.
If a site only containing out bound links or only getting irrelevant links that will be effected, by any way.
So I don't think any kind of risk is there.

I've read the Newsweek article (I assume it's the one about social networking).

However I still disagree with your notion about back links. Back links are, in effect, social networking on an Internet-wide scale. Each link is a vote, the same as social network tagging - the tag being the link anchor text.

Social networking is as open to manipulation as link generating - you only have to look at the mini groups of people form within Digg, Reddit, et al voting for each others' sites based on self interest rather than story merit, to see voting being manipulated. The majority of stories that hit the front page of Digg are there legitimately, but there will always be some that have achieved that artificially - exactly the same as search engine results.

Facebook - well on the surface it seems an ideal way of judging what's popular, what's not, etc. But that's as open to marketing manipulation as anything else. "If I'm looking for a movie, I want to know what movies my friends liked" -- and how did they decide they wanted to see the movie first, in order to come to a conclusion that they liked it? Consumer manipulation through marketing. And let's be honest, is someone that's telling you a film was good basing their judgement purely on the merits of the film with no external influences, or is the judgement mixed in with their expectations, the expectations fo their peers, their own tastes, their fan based loyalty to a particular actor, who they saw the film with, etc, etc

We also need to consider how the likes of Facebook work best: through many small groups of people. What one group deems a good movie or band, another would likely be the polar opposite. A search engine needs to determine relevance to those searching as a whole as well as popularity amongst many smaller groups (lest we end up in a situation whereby only the older, and thus 'popular' websites appeared first, leaving no room for newer but equally good/relevant sites).

If Facebook were to become the new search engine, I'd return to dial-up and break out the Yellow Pages.

To discount back links as you suggest would be to remove all off page factors, leaving on page elements (the most easily manipulated of all) as the only ranking factors. If we look at the direction of search engine algorithms currently, all of the big 3 are moving towards off page factors as determined through the links rather than away from them, and of these, MSN/Live places most emphasis on on-page factors yet it remains the least used, least relevant, and most easily spammed search engine.

I haven't given any sugesstion how Page Rank can be determined.I am trying to say Back Link is coming a obsolete factor for ranking a page.Back links from social networking is not given more importance.Those back links are more important to bots which came from other relevnat quality sites.Newsweek claimed "Google is more vulnerable than any one think".They said because according to them some non popular search engines are giving more relevant result than Google or other major search engines in some cases.
From 3 or 4 way link exchange some sites will have more back links and some less.If these sites participate in different groups of link exchange they will be benefitted.
In these way a site with more valueable to users will fall behind if it does not participate in this kind of link exchange.
He have to rely only it's natural back links.
So bots will give this site less importance than those sites

I have mentioned in my previous post also again I am mentioning that if a site have the potentiality then will definitely rank well.
You can't hide the talent from the eyes of Google.
If any one is doing unnatural and unethical link building, don't worry they will be punished.

... before you think about that... what's better?

I have no worry on this.I have just told what i think.Google have to punish those site by their bots.Bots are compuer programs.So for human it will be not too hard to make fool bots.May be it can take time.If you are satisfied with search results of major search engines no one to complain.But everyone is not satisfied as you.Their dissatisfaction is growing slowly.