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| <<<>>> |
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The Corruption of Electronic Information : Part 2 |
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| Created by Decius at
| [+ favourites]
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(...continued)
Google's monopoly of the search market places them in an important position over the sharing of electronic information. The internet is the largest and easiest informational resource that has ever existed on the planet, and Google has the formidable responsibility of distributing it.
Of course, Google fought for this responsibility and as a result they as a company must tend to it properly. The primary reason Google annihilated companies like Lycos, Excite, MSN, HotBot, AskJeeves and Looksmart is they brought an innovative product to the table that, at the time, accurately organized information.
The definition of "accurate information distribution" may be questionable, but there is the general idea that accurate information is more correct than inaccurate information. If a person desires to find out about "black ravens" and does a search, they should be presented with a host of sites that cater to "black ravens" in the best way that Google can deliver it. In essence, Google is attempting to electronically provide a human voice that asks you what you are looking for and tells you what you need to know.
The problem is that as Google has fought long and hard to keep out those that would compromise the accuracy of their algorithm, they have permitted these restrictions and guidelines to alienate lots of people from providing accurate information to those that look for it.
This deficiency in their information distribution methods was most accurately displayed by the sandbox filter. When you ask a doctor about a sickness, do you want to know what the most up to date information is or information that was assumed to be true a year ago? If you look for magazines, articles, even products the age of the resource almost always detracts from its use rather than adds to it. Similarly, websites cannot be judged by their age and in doing so, Google is clearly saying "new sites are less important and YOU as the consumer are not as interested in new information as you are old information". Although this may apply to certain circumstances, it is most certainly the minority.
Most people who perform a search want "accurate information" which is almost always "new information" because new information is updated information. Updated information is old information + improvements.
If you want to find hats on Google now you will find the same site that has topped the charts for years. Although this may be a resource you are interested in, it would be more beneficial to find companies that are attempting to compete with the said company. As we all know, competition almost always brings out the best in us as humans. Google's sandbox makes it nearly impossible for new internet companies to compete with old internet companies.
Aside from the sandbox, there are a variety of other filters that could unjustly penalize sites that do not deserve it. It is the same metaphor that has plagued mankind forever: catch all the criminals you can but do not unjustly imprison the innocent. Unfortunately Google is fully aware that they are imprisoning the innocent and do not seem to mind.
The ideals of Google have changed over the years, specifically since they went public (which suspiciously was the same year the sandbox was implemented). Their IPO price was $85.00 a share and as of this article rests above $400.00/share.
Although I do not support the belief that with money comes corruption, it is hard to perceive Google's behavior since as anything but. The sandbox was a very important implementation for Google to protect the stock price. Why? Because up to that point Google experienced severe technical and contextual issues with almost every update they did. After the sandbox and the IPO, not only did they dissolve their monthly update but the results predictably remained much more static. The sandbox, in other words, provided the company with stability which tried to prevent any massive price drops in the stock price. Since the stock price was dependant on search results, this seemed like a probable explanation.
Another important effect of the sandbox was that it forced almost all new companies to use Google's AdWord program to get noticed. If information is being distributed by Google and Google is refusing to list you because you are new (regardless of your relevancy), they provide you with the alternative of paying for it. Since AdWords was and still is the primary source of revenue for Google, the implementation of the sandbox created a worldwide internet environment where all new companies must wait an indefinite period of time before they can actually compete, and during that time they must pay for the same thing older companies receive for free, regardless of relevancy.
Additionally, because most of the importance on your relevancy ranking is determined by trusted inbound links all new companies must now request and almost always pay older companies to link to them. And as expected, sites with a high page rank now feast upon this. You will almost always see links on the bottom or side of high traffic websites that are nearly invisible. These links receive little to no clicks but are indexed by Google for those specific keywords. Established sites make a killing on these. Text-links are sold for $100 a month on a site with a page rank of 6 or above, often for one link on one page. Of course, Google does not want this. This compromises the effectiveness of their search engine, but most importantly, these new companies are now paying a third party for higher rankings when they should be paying Google through AdWords. This is why it is accepted and mildly proven that Google now penalizes sites that receive a large amount of links in a short span of time.
It is difficult to contemplate the horrendous effect this has, and is continuing to have on the growth of our online society. Older companies have less interest in competing with newer companies and new companies have less resources to invest in innovation and must instead focus almost entirely on gaining fair exposure in the marketplace.
The Corrupted era of Blogging
Blogging, like Google, is a verb now. Not only that, but it's a business. There are companies that now pay people to create topical blogs that they can sell links on. The text-link business is so big that there are blog text-link brokers that do nothing but help bloggers sell links on their blogs. This new-found rush began only recently as webmasters discovered that Google seems to place a lot of value on keyworded links that exist on blogs. As a result people ran to begin blogging and create sites that can earn them some money.
Blogging (which includes sites like MySpace) has become so large that companies actually create company blog accounts on these sites in order to sell their merchandise.
The unfortunate effect of all of this is another gigantic wave of words and images that are flooding the internet with the only purpose of making money to co-exist with Google's guidelines. This also benefits Google, for Google has a certain affinity towards blogs; In 2003 they purchased the largest blogging community on the planet, blogger.com, and are now funneling people and webmasters into it.
Resources:
(don't worry, this article is for informational purposes only and I am not receiving any pagerank from these links, nor are there referral ids in them that give me money when you click on them. I just want to provide you with resources that may help expand on what I've written. Unbelievable.)
The Art of Linkbaiting (despicable)
http://performancing.com/node/38
Text links:
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/
http://www.text-link-ads.com/ |
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| Created by Decius at
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