Seth Godin comments on Search
Posted on December 16, 2007
Filed Under Business, Tech |
I have read every one of Seth Godin’s books (I even went way out of my way to meet him once at a blogger meetup in London). He’s a terrific marketer and normally you can’t fault his observations, but in a recent post about Googles announcement of Knol he makes some very odd comments about the nature of search…
The challenge for Google, I pointed out (and was echoed by others on the panel) is that the ‘algorithm’ that drives the search engine doesn’t favor trusted partners. The New York Times should get the benefit of the doubt, for example, more than it does. It’s easy to argue for the democratic nature of search results, but both the business environment and human nature demand elements of promotion and trust.
read the whole post, “Building a platform (and thinking about Google’s Knol)”.
Um…First of all, Google does rank trusted sources. There’s been lots written about how their algorithms reflect the concept of trust, so called “TrustRank”. If the New York Times isn’t ranking or getting enough referral traffic from Google it is for other reasons.
Second, and more strangely, it sounds like he’s suggesting that it would be fine for commercial interests (‘trusted partners’) to rank better in organic results. If this is the suggestion I’m dumbfounded. The very reason that Google owns search today is because more than any other search engine they’ve fought to ensure that their organic results are based on algorithmic meritocracy (editorial votes, contextual analysis and trust amongst other things). This is so fundamental to the idea of quality search that I can hardly believe I have to make this point. Suggesting Google do otherwise is to launch an attack on their very reason for being. Odd.
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