I think the long term overall trend for search engines is that they are ranking pages higher that provide higher value to the end user. Value is a subjective term, but in addition to providing authoritative content (as measured by inbound links from other authoritative sites as PageRank does) I wouldn’t be surprised if it came to mean things like: spelling, grammar, punctuation, high content to code ratios, faster response times, lower overall page weights, valid markup (so it is likely to be usable by more browsers), better accessibility and generally anything else that improves the user experience. Clean, shorter, “hackable” URLs that reflect the content are something that fits into that theory since they improve the user experience since they are easier to remember and easier for the end user to determine the relevancy of the content to their needs prior to clicking on the link.
I think the long term overall
I think the long term overall trend for search engines is that they are ranking pages higher that provide higher value to the end user. Value is a subjective term, but in addition to providing authoritative content (as measured by inbound links from other authoritative sites as PageRank does) I wouldn’t be surprised if it came to mean things like: spelling, grammar, punctuation, high content to code ratios, faster response times, lower overall page weights, valid markup (so it is likely to be usable by more browsers), better accessibility and generally anything else that improves the user experience. Clean, shorter, “hackable” URLs that reflect the content are something that fits into that theory since they improve the user experience since they are easier to remember and easier for the end user to determine the relevancy of the content to their needs prior to clicking on the link.