That only gives me http://inessential.com/2008/11/, not http://inessential.com/2008/11/04/that_new_sound.

The second link is a partial duplicate of the first link; it contains nothing not contained in the first link. Maybe that's why?

Its possible that by linking to his article he triggered a re-indexing of it? I wont pretend to know how google works but seems plausible to me.

I can find the article just by searching 'tim bray rock roll', so for one reason or another, the article is now indexed.

I would be surprised if it has not been reindexed thanks to the link from this article.

That result is just the blog's page for November 2008, not the article page itself. So while that page _does_ have the article text on it, it is not the article itself.

I don't see any links to https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Ro... in those search results.

And rightly so, the quote is from Brent Simmons' article.

However, you're right anyways: you can't reach Tim's article by searching quotes.