The blogosphere has been discussing the latest updates to the Google
Search algorithm, these called "Google Panda 3.5" and "Google Penguin"
announced April 24 of this year
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
and Google Penguin has proven to be especially controversial. In
essence, it is a step against some of the methods used in SEO (search
engine optimization) that Google has deemed negative, or to use their
terms "black hat webspam". What does this mean? The official
announcement (above) discusses this in some detail, including terms like
"keyword stuffing" and "link schemes" while Google cites its own
"quality guidelines". Google punishes the websites it deems guilty by
sending their sites farther down the list of results, and this can have
devastating consequences for those involved.
Google Penguin may have had human costs already. Here is a post from one
SEO fellow who claims that he will be impoverished
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-casualties-15079.html, and
another that Penguin has led to unemployment in parts of the developing
countries because so much of SEO is taking place in those countries.
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/05/india-google-searchs-change-in-algorithm-and-its-impact/
These reports have not been verified, but it seems as if they could be
logical consequences. The impact of the websites going down
significantly in the web results definitely have negative consequences
for the businesses affected, along with their employees.
This shows how much power Google has. I wrote about this in another
post, "Google and Link Spam"
http://blog.jweinheimer.net/2012/01/google-and-link-spam.html about a
little store that sells flour in Vermont. Also, since everything on the
web has to do with money, I personally suspect that these updates have
some relation to the looming Facebook IPO that so many are talking
about. https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+ipo&tbm=nws
In Google terms, "quality" in a website is quite a different concept
from what a normal person would consider quality, and certainly is
radically different from the idea of "quality" in a library's
collection, its catalog, or its public services. Google provides basic
guidelines for their idea of quality:
* Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't
deceive your users or present different content to search engines
than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
* Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule
of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've
done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to
ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines
didn't exist?"
* Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or
"bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected
adversely by those links.
* Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check
rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate
our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products
such as WebPosition Gold^(TM) that send automatic or programmatic
queries to Google.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with the general notion of
"quality": the actual quality of the information contained in a webpage,
whether the information is factual, is it obsolete or biased, whether it
is based on sound reasoning or superstition. Google's "quality" is
related to a type of authenticity, although of a strange type. It is
there primarily to protect people from wasting too much of their time on
pure advertising. (I think)
Still, many have been left confused. For instance, their guideline
"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings" seems to get
rid of SEO altogether. What one would consider a trick, another would
consider a flash of brilliant insight. SEO is vital but as with
everything, it can be abused. Without SEO, the biggest sites could only
continue to rise while the lesser ones would be fated to disappear into
the morass.
One case where Google Penguin will demote your site in the search
results is if your site gets too many links made to it too quickly. This
is opposed to the concept of "natural links" which are supposed to build
up gradually over time. "Natural links?" This all seems strange to me.
What if you come up with the "killer information" that everyone wants,
or something you have created is suddenly the newest internet meme? Why
should you be punished? How long will the punishment last?
Also, it turns out that Google Penguin may actually make it easier for
competing websites to harm one another. How can this happen? By one
website employing the "black hat webspam" techniques mentioned above,
but have them aimed at their competition's site instead of their own.
Clever, but fairly obvious when you get into that kind of mindset.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4451050.htm
Another interesting demotion is in what is called "exact match domains"
which are domain names that are based on the popular keywords. For
instance, if you search "credit cards" the first hit is not Mastercard
or something, it is www.creditcards.com. Everyone is saying that these
domains have been demoted but I haven't seen it yet. "Brittany Spears",
"Barack Obama", and "credit cards" all come up on top. A search for
"ebooks" has www.ebooks.com come up second to Project Gutenberg.
Much of the impact is still being researched, but it must be understood
that "relevance" when speaking in terms of search engines, is quite
different from what the same term "relevance" means in the way people
use it in their everyday speech.
While I still believe that SEO will eventually become an important issue
for catalogers, the example of Google Penguin shows the dangers of it:
that what could be found easily yesterday is much more difficult to find
today. The patrons of libraries---not to mention the librarians
themselves--would find this outrageously complicated, if not bordering
on the insane.
The traditional task of the library catalog to provide "reliable
results" remains just as crucial as ever, in my opinion. If SEO is to be
worked into the library's tools in some way, it must allow for these
additional needs. Reward and punishment should not be part of the
library's tools.
--
*James Weinheimer* weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
*First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
*Cooperative Cataloging Rules*
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
*Cataloging Matters Podcasts*
http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
Received on Wed May 09 2012 - 10:00:31 EDT