ALL MIGHTY GOOGLE AND THE MESS YOU HAVE MADE OF THINGS
Can Cyberspace be Purged Spruced Up… Redeemed!
By Edward (Dictionary) Itor
Once Upon a Time, there was hope that the digital super highway was going to end all war, curb world hunger, unite the whole world on ecological issues and empower whistle blowers in every nook and cranny of our globe to be able to monitor and keep evil doers in check wherever they lurked.
Well-wishers and dreamers you say… maybe.
Finally connecting all the many peoples of the world with fast, reliable, affordable, constant communication capabilities was supposed to help us all bond. Every culture, race, religion, creed, nationality and political affiliation uniting as we all worked together to solve are common problems seemed like a good step in the right direction.
With an asset like that no dream could be deemed impossible!
But now that the novelty of a world wide web and a free uncensored cyberspace is wearing off and we are adjusting to the idea of everyone carrying a handheld device capable of tweeting important breaking news instantly to the whole world as well as posting a video of a puppy pooping…people are feeling let down.
Is mankind blowing our big opportunity?
Well, there certainly are a lot less believers now than there were a few years back when all this internet hype started and understandably so. Most of the world’s economies are falling apart. World Peace is still a mirage. Global warming is still a threat and the internet is filling up so fast with so much garbage that no one wishes to read or view that it is becoming difficult to navigate there.
Many finger pointers feel that Google has ruined the web! This conclusion is understandable since Google is one of the most influential entities involved with making the web user friendly. So if something web related is annoying to you, who else would you blame first besides one of the biggest players in the arena? Of course the big and powerful Google says they only want to present the best website suggestions for their customers who are searching the net to find info. In other words, they are part of the solution to unlocking all the power of the web…not the problem!
My own opinion is that Google is without a doubt the most influential entity there is that is truly trying to make the web more user-friendly. Of course their motives are sometimes questionable since they are first and foremost a business that seeks to make a profit and they have few if any serious competitors. Yet, I cannot even imagine where we would be without Google’s search engine. The internet would be a chaotic, un-navigate-able, worthless, unusable, unpopular mess. With Google there is hope!
Google’s search engine brings sanity to the internet but it is far from perfect.
In reality, we all realize that Google wants to make money like any business does. Their main business happens to be supplying suggestions for people who are looking for the best websites that have info relating to their interests. Google supplies their suggestions for free so they need to have another product or service that they can sell for income. Thus, the Big G charges businesses, organizations and people who wish to place click through ads on their search result pages. But, Google can only charge for advertising if their search engine remains popular. This means they have to be giving quality suggestions to their searchers to keep the advertisers, advertising with them!
Their number one priority must always be to keep giving quality search suggestions in order to remain the top search engine since the success of everything else they venture into ultimately relies on them being the best search engine.
So, why is it so damn hard, frustrating and time consuming to find things online? Why are we still getting those strange search results that are irrelevant to our simple search quests? How can we allow mankind’s most social means of communication and info sharing device to continue to be so abused and misused at such an alarming level? And what, if any, are the viable solutions to making the internet more functional so we all can get the most out of this fascinating tool with such incredible potential.
We are all skeptical of companies and organizations that grow very big and powerful and have very little or no real competition. But, is it Google’s fault that they are way ahead of everyone else in their industry?
The web is supposed to be a free global system designed to equalize the playing field for big corporations, small mom and pop shops and individual entrepreneurs. A lot of the net’s value lies in its usefulness for instantly sharing information globally. Sure tons of the info shared is unedited, unsubstantiated and plenty is deceiving to the point of bordering on criminal. Yet there are good points too in favor of the lack of censorship!
The net is supposed to give small researchers, innovators and inventors everywhere a chance to compete and even help smaller countries be heard and have their opinions counted and interests considered. The Web’s success revolves around an attitude of no favoritism or discrimination and anyone can play and participate. The whole web community prides itself on having few rules and little regulations. Yet Google, like the Wizard of Oz, plays a big part in just about any move anyone makes concerning the internet.
Simply put, one just has to play ball by Google’s rules if one wants one’s efforts online to be recognized! This naturally makes Google a target for blame concerning anything that goes wrong pertaining to the web, a lot of which Google really has little or no control over. If the internet seems unorganized, it must be Google’s fault! If there is too much spam, again, let’s blame Google. But are we forgetting the incredible job we are asking Google to perform; sorting out, organizing and indexing and assigning a value to everything posted online is quite a feat!
Consider for a moment that every second, more and more stuff is getting loaded and posted online and it never stops! Not only do Google’s bots have to recognize then read all of it, they have to determine instantly of what importance each post is. Plus, under what headings will people most likely search for each bit of new information. They have to categorize every new post and subcategorize and sub, sub, sub, categorize!
Now, let us figure in the added difficulty of the fact that there is only one internet but there are hundreds of different languages in the world. This complicates the sorting, organizing, indexing and valuing process even more! I’m sure you have heard of keywords, well ponder keeping track of keywords in close to a thousand different languages and dialects including every local place having their own favorite slang dictionary!
Remember Google is also battling an unscrupulous industry who calls themselves SEOs. Most SEOs, Search Engine Optimization professionals, practice trying to trick Google for their client’s benefits rather than helping Google and other search engines index better.
Of course there are many SEOs who practice actually making their client’s websites and other web real estate easier for google to read and decipher in hopes that the big G will determine, using their famous ranking algorithm that their client’s website deserves to be on the first page of Google search results. The problem is that there are so many SEOs who game the system that Google must constantly change their algorithm to weed out the phony ranking junk sites. When the algorithm changes the rankings of all websites are effected.
So, who is to blame for the bungled, confused and unprofessional state the web finds itself in?
Are Governments to blame? Google? SEOs? All of us?
In theory, a ten year old child can post their school homework assignment report they choose to write about the JFK assassination right next to a university professor’s new thesis about who they think really killed President John F. Kennedy. Other can take portions of these posts and spread them via their social media sites throughout the web. New discoveries can happen and new conclusions can emerge that contradict the findings in both of these two very different posts. Unless, everyone who shared the info replaces the old info with the new info, many posts carrying contradictory and even known false info will remain up on the web.
Tons of people who share stuff and post stuff pertaining to all kinds of topics move on and forget all about what they have posted. But, once it is in cyber space there really is no telling where it will be cloned, shared and reposted or where it may turn up or how long it will remain out there spreading rumors.
Everyone is for freedom of speech, but our children do their school reports and research their homework assignments using online resources and there really is no governing agency making sure the info they are accessing is true.
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Marketing, promotional and advertising firms are constantly developing new ways to launch and maintain their ad and commercials campaigns. There is an overwhelming potential for profit presented by monetizing the different mediums on the internet. There is certainly money to be found in them there hills! Money often breeds a percentage of corruption and unscrupulous behavior!
In a content posting playground where there is very little screening, regulating, verifying or editing going on plus pretty much anyone can post just about whatever they wish to post on almost any subject they wish for very little or no cost; you have to have plenty of chaos!
A poorly supervised, virtually non-regulated global platform like the internet with new technological, methods of use and all kinds of other aspects constantly being developed and added is particularly difficult to keep tabs on. Plus, posts can come in many forms not just textual. Google must be able to evaluate audio posts, photos, graphics, videos and films and decide where to include them all in their infinite library like indexing system.
Yes, I know that most people who go online just want to be able to search and find legitimate info and that should not be so hard to accomplish. But remember, there are no requirements one must adhere to, tests one must take or oath one must vow to up hold, in order to be able to post online. So, there is always the question of how reliability and trustworthy is the info one is looking at.
Just to organize all the data that is being posted is a chore that is seemingly impossible! How can we seriously expect Google or any search engines to also police what is being posted about every possible subject there is to post? So our dilemmas: We have compiled a terrific amount of information on all sorts of things; most of the info has not been verified and thus its value and possible usage is suspect at least. Plus all this info is so vast and growing constantly!
They say info is power but if the info we are accumulating is far from being organized in any easy to access, decipher and then useable fashion is it really info yet or just potential info?
Bear in mind that it is very easy to post anonymously and to cloak one’s identity when posting and you have an arena that is very inviting to criminals and unscrupulous activity. We have basically set up a situation where finding quality information is like searching for a needle in a hay stack. The fact that anyone would attempt to organize such a mess deserves a high five! My congratulations goes out to Google for attempting it. I for one am grateful!
That is not to say that Google constantly changing their unpublicized, secret algorithm is perfect, but the changing algorithm formula is still the best thing we have for keeping the greedy promotional schemers in check from spamming us to death.
Wiki sites trust the web community to monitor their content, with the idea of having the best content eventually via constant visitors weeding out the bad or unworthy posts. That this works sometimes, actually, amazes me!
Yelp, Angie’s list, City Search and other review sites let the masses converse freely about their experiences plus rate all the services and products provided by companies with websites out there.
Facebook and many other popular social media websites also allow discussion and comments reviewing posts. Most of these rating platforms don’t use math algorithms as Google does for their evaluations instead they rely on viewers’ unbiased opinions to assist with weeding out the bad and helping the cream rise to the top. For example; Facebook uses their ‘like’ system where visitors to a post who like that post can click a ‘like’ button to register an ‘I like this’ vote. Posts that gain the most likes by viewers should represent the best posts. Of course we all know marketers have ways of adding tons of fake likes but that is to be expected from such an unscrupulous group!
Should we outlaw all marketing on the web…period! Ban all commercials and promoting from cyber space!
That the Google algorithm has not worked perfectly yet is no secret. When we search we get some very poor search results. Search results are so consistently bad that we have come to expect that we will have to dig a lot deeper after we conduct a Google or any search engine search in order to find the web pages we are seeking.
The result of allowing Google so much power to dictate how the game is played has often resulted with the best designed websites; most original, artistic, functional and informative sites, being forced to ruin their artistry, compromise the way they function and bend their originality to conform to a shady scientific math formula in order to rank on page one in searches! Thus Google is making everyone do all the very things they keep saying they are against; jump through hoops to get good rankings! This definitely detracts from the average internet user’s experience. Not only does it take too long for us to find the information we are looking for but we get bored, frustrated and worn-out during the process!
No one really wants the content on their website to be filled up with keyword density which is the repetition of the exact same word or phrase! But we all do it to please Google because recognizing repeated words and phrases is a big part of how Google’s method works for determining what your web post is about. The best, most educated and skilled writers in the history of the world have to ruin their work by repeating the same phrase over and over and over so the search engines spiders recognize that phrase as being important! Everyone realizes the text sounds ridiculous that way but it is all part of the search ranking game called SEO, search engine optimization.
None of us would bother automating backlinks, buying links from any and every website who will allow a do follow link if Google wasn’t rewarding that behavior! Seriously who would ever think of junking up a professional business website with irrelevant, amateurish cell phone made videos? But video is the name of the Google game right now since Google purchased YouTube a huge video sharing site.
The truth is you can’t suppress real talent. In a medium as vast, intricate and far reaching as the internet, real artists, the very best thinkers and unique innovators emerge from all walks, all the time. Eventually these geniuses will become fed up with being told they have to stifle their creativity and conform to please machines and algorithms!
There is certainly some legitimacy to the accusations that the constantly changing algorithm really is just a ploy to force people who wish to remain, for any length of time, on page one of the search results to have to buy advertising in order to be there. Can you see how if the rules of ranking your website pages change every few months again and again you have to redo all your website pages plus figure out what the new unpublicized algorithm changes are calling for every time they change it in order to remain ranked on their first page results for searches for any consistent length of time.
It is easy to see that it is hard to run an online business or any online portion of one’s business that relies on consistent rankings! Eventually you will give up or burn out trying to keep up and just pay for advertising in order to be on page one.
But of course it that was true then that would be in direct conflict with the whole naive theory that the web was created to level the playing field for small business because then we would be right back where we always were the people and companies who have the most money to pay for advertising dominate cyberspace!
Yes, Google must own up to and take responsibility for their share of contributing to creating a lot of the mess that has been made out of such potential.
There is certainly a lot of content on the web these days but the quality of that content is becoming more and more suspect. Plus, this seemingly unending wealth of mass information that everyone is always speaking in praise about is actually turning out to be tons of recycled, same old same old information. Plenty is plagiarized but since the plagiarizers are hard to track and pin down, legal action is rarely taken or followed through on.
Sharing the same information over and over again fast has seemingly become the internet users’ favorite past time. The desire to re-Tweet, re-post, recirculate breaking news pieces seems much more important than getting different viewpoints or further verifying facts and enhancing details or doing some investigative work to add anything of value to the cloned discussions.
Marketers are getting much better at camouflaging their promotional efforts and advertisements as what is being called content marketing. This blurring of the lines between valuable content and commercials makes it even tougher for search engines to determine what information is quality versus what is just dressed up marketing information.
At present, when we search for info we get search results or suggestions based on which website pages have been visited the most by others searching for similar info to what we are now searching for. When the average website visitor stays on a particular website for a long while, it is assumed the visitor is enjoying their visit and probably found what they were searching for. Thus, the search engines assume similar searchers will also like that website or page as a suggestion. But the most popular web pages do not always have the best quality content. Popularity of a post can be based on its timing rather than its merit. Or, perhaps it is only popular because everyone is making fun of it. Search engines have no way of reasoning why a post was popular. Remember that once posted content can stay on the web for years and years, way after it has become outdated or blasé.
The problem is the web is filling up with a lot of content created by amateurs many posing as professionals and authorities. The quality of their work is poor since it is unmonitored and there is no screening out or preapproval process. Thus, poor quality, worthless info is piling up much faster than good quality info is being added. With the popularity of social media which resolves around amateur and hobby, frivolous posting, the ratio of accumulating quality content to poor quality content will continue to favor the growth of amateur, poor content by leaps and bounds. This means if nothing changes soon, it will keep getting harder and harder to find good quality content online because there will be proportionately less good quality content in the total mix. Soon, the public will begin to insist Google separate the amateur stuff from the pro stuff. How successfully Google will respond remains to be seen. But I suspect that it will take one whopper of an algorithm!
I also suspect that if anyone is going to be able to salvage our new past time…cyberspace; my money is still on Google, the one entity we have all been relying on since the start to make any sense out of this whole mess!