Basically the changes that you mentioned are in fact additions of variables in the algorithms that Google is using to rank websites.

I’ve been following a interesting “discussion” on WPN video blog about universal and behaviour search, the use of the “new” variables and the fact that SEOs are becoming marketers and ranking alone is no longer a good metric to measure your SEO success.

It all started with a “ranking is dead” statement from Bruce Clay. He was also saying that Google used 120 variables to rank a website, but now they’re using around 200. In his opinion, the extra 80 variables are related to how engaging is your website (images, videos, flash, sound, etc.) and at the end of the day, if you don’t have videos and you’re competition does, they will rank higher then you.

Here’s the story if you want to watch the videos:

Bruce Clay’s “ranking si dead” interview, followed by a response from Matt Cutts and a revisit from Bruce Clay.