Interesting list, and most of it lines up with what I've seen across both Google and Amazon's A9. The thin content point is spot on - if Google's product is relevance, serving a thin page is like Amazon showing a listing with three bullet points and no images. It might not get a penalty, but it sure as hell won't rank. You can compensate with authority, sure - same way you can compensate for a weak listing with aggressive PPC spend. But you're just buying your way around a flaw, and it's not sustainable.
Core web vitals are another thing people overcomplicate. I'd argue they're less a direct signal and more a proxy for user experience. Faster pages mean happier users, which means better engagement metrics, which Google does use to train its systems. On a macro level, if your site loads like a brick, your conversion rate tanks regardless of rankings. So even if it's not a ranking factor, it's a business factor.
the real truth is that SEO (and honestly, any algorithmic game) is about competition. That builder in a small town with a decent site and a few reviews can hit page one because the bar is low. throw that same site into a city with twenty agencies doing link building and content strategies, and it's invisible. It's the same principle as Amazon - a niche product with low competition can rank with minimal effort. A saturated category requires a full-stack assault. People forget that ranking factors don't exist in a vacuum, they're relative to what everyone else is doing. That's the macroeconomic angle nobody talks about enough.
