The Role of the Search Engine in New Media

What role do search engines play in new media?

One of the parts of Nick Carr's book, The Big Switch, that I read with close interest refers to the unbundling of media. In the chapter, Carr mentions that at least one major newspaper, The Times of London, admits that it has already begun training its reporters to craft their stories in ways that lead to higher placements in search engines.

As long as algorithms determine the distribution of profits, they seem to also determine what gets published. Or do they? Enter a key word or phrase into your favorite search engine and results pop up in order of -- importance, relevance, popularity, age? How do stories get ranked on search engines? Rank depends on:

• the age of your URL
• the number of inbound links to the site
• the number of links to the article (and the authority of the linking sites), and
• the "hotness" of the articles keywords

TechCrunch reported recently on a study by the University of Southern California's Center for the Digital Future. The finding uncovered that a growing number of people believe that search results are unreliable and inaccurate. In fact (emphasis mine):

51% of people trust information provided by search engines, down from 62% in 2006. Google, as the most popular search engine in the United States, isn’t trusted by nearly half (49%) of the people who use it, an interesting result.

After seven years of studying online behavior and attitudes, the Digital Future Report “found that the Internet is perceived by users to be a more important source of information for them — this over all other principal media, including television, radio, newspapers, and books.”

An outstanding result, however the trust levels for all media aren’t particularly high, with only 46 percent of Internet users saying that most or all of the information online is generally reliable.

Could that have something to do with everyone following very closely search engine optimization (SEO) advice? Could it be about the unbundling of content in new media? Getting feeds to just one writer, or one type of content provides you great flexibility and freedom to make portable only what you wish to read. However, that may come at a cost -- that of context. Stay with me here as we explore one possibility.

Clearly stories always stood on their own, you bought the paper and leafed through it focusing on those headlines that caught your fancy. And yet, there is something about layout and placement that can bundle groups of stories or highlight content in a way that provides context to it.

As I'm writing this I am reminded of the very low tech reason why Melanie Griffith decided to put forth the idea for a supposedly lucrative merger in Working Girl. Remember that scene when the tycoon from Trask Industries, one of the firm's clients, asks Tess/Melanie's boss where she got the idea to suggest his company invest in radio instead of television? The boss could not explain. It turns out, the idea came from an apparently unrelated story in the newspaper -- the tycoon's daughter's wedding announcement. On the reverse of that story Melanie/Tess read information that lead her to think how the investment in radio would allow the company to gain more of a foothold on the market.

Those things never happen in real life, right?

I came across a post by Laurent Haug where he talks about things he is thinking about. One of them is how:

Google rank will become a political argument. Instead of saying “this is why I am right” political leaders will say “type ‘Iraq war’ in Google and look at how my speech comes up first”. Google will be perceived as the ultimate organizer of relevance, and as nobody can control it it will provide the needed crowdibility (that’s a new word I just made up) politicians have lost. If you are on top of Google you are right, and you are right because the population put you there.

That's an interesting take. Is it plausible? If everyone is following advice on SEO, including the media, the search results might be just more than a little muddled. What do you think?

Comments

[Baher]

SEO is a rapidly evolving discipline, what influences the ranking algorithms today might disappear in the future, so a correct long term media strategy should focus on the human side of content more than being Search Engines friendly.

[huperniketes]

Search (the results and its mechanisms) isn't only influenced by the community and our conversations, it also shapes and directs our conversations to the extent that links it provides (or rejects) affect our perception of our neighbors' views.

While crawlers like Google, and aggregators like Technorati, may have begun as a layer above the conversation, an adjunct to provide a higher level of services to the community, we have actually shifted the conversation to sit atop search services. Our postings, dripping into the search processors which we are now dependent upon, serve as our guides to direct or redirect the flow of our musings, and also to draw respondents into the discussion. In either case, the ability to greatly narrow one's attention to a single topic can also serve to limit it further to approved sources. The ability to connect parties also serves to divide.

The ability to connect previously unrelated fields to solve problems, as you pointed out, will depend on another set of skills.

Do you have fire in your belly?

[Valeria Maltoni]

@DrBaher -- Some days I feel like the whole body of knowledge of what we know now is rapidly evolving. And of course it is. Content and human interaction is the secret sauce -- although not the silver bullet everyone is hoping to find. The quickest way is often times the right way. Same rules apply to content that is searchable than they do to content that is worth reading: make it useful, compelling, and worth sharing.

@huperniketes -- so you are saying it is a self fulfilling loop. Interestingly enough I have often felt that the systems inside organizations that were created to serve the people working in them now have a reverse effect. People have to conform to them, sometimes to the detriment of content and relevance. Plenty of fire in my belly though. How about you? Thank you for contributing this well formed thought.

[Geoff Livingston]

Not plausible. Calconis also wrote on the topic and a significant decrease in Americans believe in SEO as a credible search mechanism, from 60% to 50%. I'm not saying Mahalo is the answer, but I am saying something else is.... Semantic Web anybody?

[Marshall Sponder]

Search Engines arbitrarily rank information on several factors. The problem, I call it "Google Truth" - people are consulting search engines for almost every question they have - it's as if the Search Engine has become an Oracle.

That gives search engines, particularly Google, too much control of what people see first, what's in their consideration set.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Geoff -- well, we go back to that conversation fur sure. Until Semantic Web is a valid alternative, I think we may be still using (and catering to the metrics) of search engines.

@Marshall -- good point! Search engines are not the Oracle of Delphi. I wonder how many people have the patience to triangulate searches and dig deeper than the first couple of pages.

[Cam Beck]

It's a fascinating observation. I didn't know this until a couple of weeks ago, but one of my articles appears on the first Google results page for the search "The Truth about John Edwards."

Understanding the way people use search engines, they aren't necessarily looking for what is "true," but what seems most likely to satisfy their predefined criteria.

When they think they found it, they stop searching.

In fact, I'm most worried about this statement: "only 46 percent of Internet users saying that most or all of the information online is generally reliable."

I wonder what it is they're searching for that would lead them to conclude "most or all" information online is reliable. Do that many people believe everything they read online?

Scary.

[Valeria Maltoni]

It would seem to be that way. The written word has always had a certain amount of power and now so much more is written. This makes me think back to the discussion on influence.

[mvellandi]

Can search engines find quality content? That evaluation is always made by the reader. The engine just operates according to a set of rules. So while learning these rules and trying to game them democratizes the opportunity for content discovery by search engine users, what does that mean for the average quality of content in a generic search AND the qualitative expectations of searchers? It seems reasonable it would decrease.

Is there a better option? Semantic search seems interesting, although quite fuzzy at this point. How about adding a drop-down on Google's home for keywords (like how we tag our posts), or adding a special operator to the search field for topics/keywords? Then teaching people about it? The simple addition of one parameter could help folks out. It just seems that from a one-size-fits-all design strategy, you're expecting too much from your users. Give them a little aid, or make some of the existing options more prominent.

[Carolyn Ann]

Why would people trust Google? And most people aren't even aware of "SEO", let alone know whether to trust it or not!

I can't decide if I'm shocked that 46% believe what they read online, or that only 46% believe, etc. I think it depends on the context of the information - if it's on the NY Times website, I think the trust factor would go up exponentially. Unless you're a southern Republican, in which case it would go down. All of which highlights the problem of statistics.

On the other hand, most blogs will barely register on the old trustometer. They are perceived as partizan, not especially well written, held to no known standard, and can be excruciatingly difficult to read (I said that one, already, I know - it's so true, it's worth repeating...)

I'm not sure about that semantic web - it strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. Ultimately, the search firms would always figure out a way to exploit it - otherwise they would go out of business, and that's probably not in the business plan... But paying attention to the human aspects of a story will do for some; others will insist (probably with dollars, or more likely euro's, considering how badly the ol' greenback is doing) on the search engine producing the politico's yakking up at the top.

Sorry, dinner time - gotta go. :-)

Carolyn Ann

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mario -- now that is an interesting thought. We have talked about the use of tags on several occasions here. It would also be nice to be able to measure how many people find you according to certain tags. I do wonder if we would also need to learn economy of words used for tagging. I think changes are on the horizon.

@Carolyn Ann -- yes, tags can also be bought, can't they? I believe Tim Bernes-Lee has gotten into some of the aspects of the semantic Web that touch upon issues brought up in this conversation. I will need to go and review his material to form an impression.

[huperniketes]

Unless SEO now has a different meaning from the one I'm familiar with, it isn't a mechanism for searching, it is for results positioning. And the study both Valeria and Calacanis refer to place the results at the center of user dissatisfaction.

But regardless how dissatisfied we are with Google's page ranking system (yes, I'm definitely among them), the alternatives (trackbacks, blogrolls, del.icio.us' crowd-sourced tagging, etc.) fail to provide sufficient inventory for netizens, and we'll continue to depend on search engines in our quest for satisfying content. We'll continue to filter available content through those paths to reduce the amount of information to sift through.

The Semantic Web is not the cure for the common cold. It is only a way to structure data so programs can determine what people are actually writing about. And it is an impractical reality at this point for the same reason that so few people are designers or programmers: it requires specialized knowledge and skills to make it work properly.

[Valeria Maltoni]

A mechanism that gives you a certain output depending on the amount of effort that companies and individuals have put into positioning.

Users are probably feeling the same dissatisfaction they feel when they are inundated with non pertinent messages pushed at them.

Lack of skill and specialized knowledge is becoming a problem in many, many areas, not only in programming. Just finding a marcomm person who can structure the presentation of information to create a marketing conversation is very challenging. When I used to do interpreting and translation work, I got applications all the time from people who thought that knowing two languages equaled being a translator. It requires a special skill and knowledge -- humans tend to nuance content.

[Eamon]

SEO is still important to one degree or another. But at the end of the day being an EXPERT and being good an COMMUNICATING what you are an expert in is going to be more and more the key to success on the Internet. I think.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Eamon:

Thank you for putting the spotlight on content. They go hand in hand. You can be an expert, but if you cannot reach the world you intend to touch and communicate with about your expertise, nobody will know. That's why digital distribution has become so important.