Google - Internet Democracy?Written by Thomas Jenkins
Is Google, as its creators (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) claim, 'uniquely democratic'? Well, it is certainly unique, or at least it was when it was founded. However, its claim to be democratic is extremely questionable. If it is indeed a democracy, it is one comparable to 19th Century Britain, where only rich had any real vote, some people had multiple votes and bribery was rife.Google works on assumption that by putting a link on your page to another site, you are casting a vote for that website. However, is this assumption a reasonable one to make? The short answer is...no. The primary, and perhaps most fundamental flaw in this is that people can put more than one link on their page. If some people have more votes than others, then surely this undermines democratic fabric on which Google is said to be based. Furthermore, people often pay for links on high ranking sites - we call this advertising. Google reads every link on a page, it has no way of knowing whether it was paid for or not. Can a system where votes can easily be bought, ever be described as democratic, even in loosest sense?
| | Search Engine Updates vs. SEOWritten by Bruce Zhang
Webmasters always anxiously wait for a search engine update. Those who rank well want to see their sites get even better. Those who didn't do well expect a major boost. Those whose sites get de-indexed anticipate a major comeback. Those who just started new sites bet on their sites will make into first page of search engine result pages (SERPs) for their targeting keywords. Of course, not everyone will be happy about results of search engine updates. After all, search engine traffic is a zero-sum game - someone loses and someone gains. Then, webmasters start preparing for next update.The Business Reasons Behind The Major Updates All major search engines claim that they strive to present search results to users with highest quality. But business of search engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many business reasons for every major search engine updates. Search engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion rate since searchers are very close to make their buying decisions. The downside of search traffic for webmasters is that they don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today, but nowhere next day. Search engine companies will, no doubt, use search engine traffic to maximize values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update (allegra update or Superbowl update) once again shocked webmaster community like last Florida update. The noticeable change in Superbowl update is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords that aren't even highly relevant to their pages. You may think move is to fight spams and improve quality of SERPs. That's only part of story. The results of update is that websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press releases) will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations.
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