Lobby group to challenge search engine practices

Read this also...thought it would be a good article to follow over the coming months...algorithmic preferences to companies who pay for the privilege....seo techniques being made redundant as the first page of a search query is nothing but sponsored listings. The onus is on the SE is act responsibly..but how would we know anyway.

Something I dont understand about google is that if you do searches for large blue-chips you will see that thay almost always come first.

Now if you go on there web site you will often see that they have low PR with very few back links.

Whats going on here.. ? I suspect google is hand tweaking the results but not sure.

Just had a peep at Google

www.google.com/search?sou...%2Eco%2Euk

returns
Sorry, no information is available for the URL argos.co.uk

Find web pages that contain the term "argos.co.uk"

Well it makes me smile.

We can always train our visitors to use a new search engine.

A few years back, HastaLaVista was top of the pile. Before that, Yahoo, Lycos, excite, whatever. Googley appeared and became a buzzy byword for quality search results. H&ll, I know people who made it their homepage! :-) Once Gooley had established their position, they then started the monetisation process. Search results suffer, result is that a new engine will eventually appear and take over the crown. Googler becomes another 'B' league team.

And before you ask, yes, a number of interesting new ideas are on the drawing board already..., and no, I don't know what they are.

Best
JaJa

newmediazero, 27 June 2003

Lobby group to challenge search engine practices
Chris Dillabough
A search engine lobby group has launched this week with the aim of putting pressure on engines to give SMEs a fair deal, and may resort to copyright law if it's not heeded.
The group has been established by Paddy Bolger, CEO of search engine optimisation (SEO) firm Top-pile. He believes the engines, seeking higher revenue, are increasingly giving unfair prominence to larger advertisers in listings, and that SMEs must speak with a united voice if they're to reverse the trend. He's aiming to sign up 100,000 SMEs by the end of the year.
The group will represent individuals' complaints, but the main aim is to campaign on general issues. According to Bolger, these include the 'spiralling cost of pay-per-click' listings, search engines' 'refusal' to deal with queries from sites about listings disappearing, and their allegedly removing sites' algorithmic listings then asking them to buy paid-for listings.
Bolger said the group would seek to use copyright law as a means of exerting influence on the engines if lobbying alone doesn't succeed.
'They need to understand that it's the existence of these millions of Web sites that has created their success,' he said. 'Without this large database, search engines wouldn't exist and wouldn't be able to monetise results.'
However, the lobby group has drawn criticism from some players in the search sector.
One SME questioned whether it was possible for a group set up by the head of an SEO company to truly represent small businesses. It also questioned why, when joining the group through the searchenginelobbygroup.com site, SMEs were asked to consent to receiving emails from 'sponsors'.
A rival SEO said there were ample case studies proving that SMEs could do well with search and that the engines were moving to become more accountable.

______________________

thought this article from New Media Age might be of interest

Helen

Clue: Some times in life it is not what you know but who!
Sorry I meant to add, this is my theory!

Jess

Paddy was at an Ecademy event a couple of weeks ago where he made his rant to the audience.

He has some interesting points, and is certainly an eloquent speaker.

However, I would raise two other points here:

(1) One of Google's top execs in the UK was also there. I raised a question about DMOZ, and I got a response from their engineers within 24 hours of her reading it. Not a brilliant response, but it did at least acknowledge the issue.

(2) Top Pile, and Gobango - a search engine which Paddy runs are both major spammers themselves. Don't we already have a few lobby groups to question this???

My conclusion: Great idea to have a lobby group, wrong person to lead it.