[thelist] should we just give up and buy the darn keywords/rankings?

Joe Crawford jcrawford at avencom.com
Mon Jun 4 16:49:49 CDT 2001

"Green, Janet" wrote:
> Obviously this is a sad, sad thing for information-rich, money-poor websites
> - the fact that a company PAYS to have its site listed in search results is
> in no way a reflection on the quality of the site itself (whether it
> contains any actual information)... and those sites that cannot afford to
> pay for SE results will likely see far less traffic if this trend continues.
> It's also bad news for surfers, who may not realize that paid placement does
> NOT guarantee keyword relevance, but who may tire of sifting through paid
> results before they ever get to the non-paid listings.


> Hell, this could cast
> a huge pall over the credibility of the entire internet as an information
> source, if surfers find that "paid" placements aren't relevant to their
> keyword search.

One of the the things Tim Berners Lee says in "Weaving The Web" is that
paid search engine results which don't report themselves as such are a
perversion of the open-resource internet. I don't have the book handy,
or I'd quote it. But basically he echos your sentiment.

> Finally, SE's must identify paid placements as just that in
> order to protect their own credibility. Bad news, bad new, bad news, IMO.

Yes, anything else blurs the line in ways that are fundamental.

Now, mind you, the line between what is "journalism" and what is "public
relations" is getting wider and fuzzier everyday. But to me the best
evidence that pay-for-placement fails is that google gets it right,
great results, and no money influences the results. Yes, there's a paid
ad, but it also includes the text "Sponsored Link" as well as offsetting
it in color.

I don't think paid placement is wrong per se, but not identifying paid
placement is clearly unethical for a search engine which purports to
serve a "public good."

I'm open to hearing lots of talk on this. I wonder if a coherent
argument could be made that paid links could be made to make search
engines better.

	- Joe <http://artlung.com/>
Joe Crawford ||||||||||||||       mailto:jcrawford at avencom.com
||||||||||||||||||||||||             http://www.avencom.com
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||      Avencom: Set Your Sites Higher

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