> SEO is gaming Google's heuristics. I fail to see immediate disagreement here: I don't see how Google's ranking process/method/algorithm being heuristic chang

> SEO is gaming Google's heuristics. I fail to see immediate disagreement here: I don't see how Google's ranking process/method/algorithm being heuristic changes the observation that to a website in the end it is a set of ranking rules, that can in some ways be gamed. SEO is two part process: discovering those ranking rules and abusing them. Your example with gaming alphabetical listings only reinforces the idea that SEO abuses rules set forth by the ranking engine. However, it does not meaningfully matter whether the incentives inherent in the ranking system form results the way they do intentionally. What matters is the eventual behavior of the ranking system. Mostly because by definition you cannot filter out bad actors entirely, all you can do is 1) place some arbitrarily enforced barriers, which are generally prohibitively costly 2) place incentives minimizing gain of bad actors.