In an interview with Gord Hotchkiss published at Search Engine Land, Google's Matt Cutts all but sounds the death knell for black hat
SEO, saying that the recent implementation of personalization of Google's search results should be seen as a "call to action" for SEOs that are focusing on reverse engineering search engine algorithms:
There's a fork in the road, and people can think hard about whether they're optimizing for users or whether they're optimizing primarily for search engines. And the sort of people who have been doing "new"
SEO, or whatever you want to call it -- that's social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz -- those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract backlinks, attract lots of discussion. Those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.