Recently, someone said I spend too much time on the computer. So, I was constructively convicted of that truth. While I benefit greatly from the good of a great Search Marketing Industry education, I also allow the evil of hindering my progress in other areas (like exercise).
I love this quote on "EVIL" by Joan of Arcadia from the CowPi.com blog: "Evil is charming and beautiful. It makes you doubt yourself. It asks for one small compromise after another until it whittles you down, and, it functions best when no one believes in it." Everyone, including the Search Engines and myself, needs to be aware of how insidiously subtle evil can be.
Now, back to my last comments on the Santa Clara University's (Markkula Center for Applied Ethics) Conference on "The Ethics and Politics of Search Engines" held on 2/27/06.
Again, the participants were: "Peter Norvig, director of research, Google
Terry Winograd, professor of computer science, Stanford University
Geoffrey Bowker, executive director, Center for Science, Technology, and
Society
Moderator: Kirk O. Hanson, executive director, Markkula Center for
Applied Ethics"
First, Peter Norvig said: "What we've (Google) chosen to do is to say that our number one focus is always going to be on the end users, and everything else is going to follow from that. So to the extent to which we make money and
do good for the company and therefore help the stockholders, it's all by
serving the users first. And I think that has implications for how we
run the company, the decisions we make, and the ethical considerations." While a "win 1st" (end user-consumer) - "win 2nd" (client-buyer-advertiser) - "win 3rd" (ethical seller-stockholders) scenario has the right priorities, how you go about "serving the users first" is most important!
In my opinion, Google (as well as any other search engine) needs to serve the search user better by educating the online user much more than they do now. Danny Sullivan, who I respect, believes (understandably so) that searcher-users "..don't care that it (BMW) is being punished for spam reasons." in his SEW Forum post on "Google Removes BMW Germany For Spamming". This is a generalization and may very well be true for the majority of online search users at this point in time. However, that doesn't mean that many aren't just ignorant of the ethical issues, and therefore don't care. As online search usage increases with increased broadband adaptation, the need for sites like Google Guide (which has a disclaimer: "Google Guide is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by Google.") increases. While their Table of Contents is a great online search user "how to" educational tool, it doesn't address any ethical issues that I could find.
This 11/1/05 article by Alan Perkins talks about how SEO has "Black Hat/White Hat" (misleading misnomers, in my opinion) ethical issues that come down to "do the ends always justify the means?". Right now, Google has only a Search Engine Optimizers sub-section within "Google Information for Webmasters" that says: "a few unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results." It also says in their Webmaster Guidelines: "These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites)." It goes on to say: "Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit."
Why not at least have a conspicuous "FOR SEARCH USERS" section in Google's "About Google" Index that educates online search users to the details of ALL THE REASONS WHY it is bad for users to have the top search listing results agressively manipulated! For me, just the possible potential that the listing results at the top of the SERP's may NOT BE AS RELEVANT TO MY INTENT is sufficient. However, other issues like too many commercial web sites (that can afford expensive "Black Hat SEO's") showing up at the top vs. informational sites (as Yahoo! "MINDSET" Beta differentiates between) makes my consumer advocate "blood boil".
Check out this Google SERP for "waterproof pumps" with "moderate SafeSearch Filtering" set in "Preferences". I now get "Xandria Safe Sex Toys" as the # 1 organic result! Is it possible that this adult site, Xandria, may have used aggessive manipulation techniques in the Search Engine Optimization of their web site, or is it just the most relevant result for "waterproof pumps" according to Google's algorithmic parameters? The 2nd to 4th organic results on that SERP are about different kinds of mechanical pumps. the 5th result is about women's shoes (results subject to change with time).
Starting with my last post, I am now taking a que from B.L. Ochman's blog post on "Two Surefire Ways to Brand Your Blog Content" by trying to remember to put the "Brokerblogger.com" name in the content of all my posts. Brokerblogger.com is now starting to get "screen scraped" even though I have a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Creative Commons License . This matter has to do with the "Ethics and Commercial Politics" of what goes on within the Internet.
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