PageRank - The Game Keeps Changing

Chris Richardson wrote last Friday that the feathers ofthe SEO community were ruffled when a Google's representative said thatthe PageRank bar in the Google Toolbar was for "entertainment purposesonly" This was quickly countered by Google Guy, who is the regular butanonymous, go-between Google and the SEO community.

Frankly I think the cat is out of the bag and it's abouttime. The use of linking to rate web pages has distorted search engineresults in a number of manners:

1. Preoccupied people with SEO tricks instead of the content of their site.

2. Created an artificial market for the exchange and/or sale of links.

3. Blinded people to the fact that link building's main purpose is to build traffic from related sites. One link at a time.

No matter what people say about SEO techniques it has to belooked at as an economic game. The search engines consistently changehow they rate pages and the SEO community responses in turn, acontinuous cycle. It's that same thing as hackers vs. computer securityand anti-virus companies, like Symantec and McAfee, with the economicstakes not being quite as high.

The real question is this, is the search engine/search engineoptimizer like the relationship between a shark and a pilot fish or isit more parasitic? This is where the whole black hat vs. white hatdiscussion comes from. But the problem is deeper then that, linking asbeen "tagged" as a method of building traffic. It's no longer a beingconsidered for its own sake. The original Google/Stanford patent/methodhas changed the game forever. The "pure" cooperative academic link is athing of the past. Market forces are driving competition forquantity/quality links.

Is there really any doubt that the linking has twisted marketforces and become a game in and of itself? Here is a list of theproducts and service that people use to increase links to they site.

1. SEO software that advises the building of links withmatching key words and phrases, like WebPosition Gold, InternetBusiness Promoter, and Web CEO.

2. Link building software like Zeus and Arelis.

3. Linking building services, some which charge a perlink basis plus others that charge a higher fee for site with a higherPageRank.

4. IP cloaking services and software.

5. Link Cooperatives.

6. Intranet, mini-site, linking.

Notice I didn't pass judgment on any of the listed methods. Thereal "rule" in the SE/SEO relationship is that the rules can't stay thesame if the search results are going to continue to be relevant.

Even if PagePank was created to "do no evil", the situationhas changed. So when someone at Google says that PageRank is forentertainment purposes that someone is admitting that the game haschanged, even if the official party line stays the same. Too manypeople know how to cook the results so Google has modified itsalgorithm, SEO its your move.

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