Loads of examples of companies that have apparently seen success with "white hat" SEO doesn't prove anything, without also showing what they have done to get that search ranking, and also showing that they haven't used "black hat" techniques.
Proof is a pretty high bar for any SEO assertion. You can (and should) apply the scientific method to SEO for years, and still never arrive at objective data because much like economics, experiments tend not to be reproducible to any great degree. The architects of the search engines are in an arms race against the black hats.
Which brings me to my next point: the gradient between black and white hat SEO is very wide and gray. The perception of hat color is largely dependent on the perceiver's opinion of the content in question. That's why Calacanis swears up and down Mahalo is not spam, and why no one here buys it.
Yeah, I wasn't complaining that conclusive evidence should have been included, more than, because of the lack of proof, a list of examples shouldn't be used to make the point at all.
I've no idea, I have little/no experience with SEO. But someone showing a list of websites and saying "these did well with white hat SEO - see, it does work!" doesn't convince me to agree with either side of the argument.
Never going to happen. Welcome to a complex adaptive system that is SEO where you can never rewind history to pinpoint exactly what you did to get a result. At least not any more than an economist can tell you anything.
