SEO outing: Double standards!

The SEO outing strategy is based on a strong belief that manipulation of SEO is harmful and deteriorates the quality of the search engine. On the face of it, these thoughts are buyable but on second thoughts, isn’t the entire concept of media formulated to manipulate and garner attention (that’s how they make money!).

What’s hot- sells!!

Media follows a simple rule of selling what’s hot, be it any form of media- T.V, newspapers etc. The flowchart to success is quite simple too- create a bubble (or take an existing one) then promote it through media channels, make your gains and then hunt for the next bubble, most probably larger than the last one! Of late, we saw the mortgage fraud bubble taking place of the tech bubble. Soon, the bubble of mortgage fraud will see itself losing sheen to something else (say, green energy or counter-terrorism!).

Media pandering isn’t something unknown to you and me. It’s the second nature of media to make things seem more important than it actually is. Further, to flow with the tide is innate with media. Take for example, the same ones who show stats on mortgage fraud that causes panic and suggest you to cut down expenses, secure your finances etc were suggesting you to opt for a second mortgage, take advantage of the loans and credit cards few years back!

Advertisers’ interests top the priority list!

FOX news fired few of its reporters for a quite weird reason of wanting to report the potential link between cancer and rBGH. Well, the actual reason behind the firing of the reporters was that if the beans were spilled, it would have led to a cut down of rBGH ads! Yes, this is shockingly low media standards!! However, not all belong to the same standards. Some biggies like Google try to strike a balance (notice the usage of ‘try’) between advertisers and ‘ethics’ and this can be bluntly attributed to the enormous revenue they make!

Channels of misinformation

There are numerous ways of dressing up misinformation:

• Hyped public relation- Google actually came out by initially that page ranks leveraged the unique democratic structure of the web! Why couldn’t they just say it was an indigenous algorithm that’s supposed to mechanically calculate and assign relative rankings to each website?
• Sensationalism and distortions: Sensationalism works and so does some flashy images and fancy lines! Further, what about billboards with scantily dressed models or magazine page cover alike?
• Reductionism, lies, politics, and capitalism: Better not speak much about this topic; coz its existence is an open secret and talking about it seems like prattling.
  

Even governments manipulate the media. Take for example, the biggest economy of the world U.S. twiddling with information regarding the Iraq war or of inside trading prior to the credit crunch!

So, why are SEO techniques like selling links considered a taboo? At least it isn’t as harmful as lying! People need to carry out a living and thus, they practice some tricky SEO techniques for gaining profits. The game’s been played smartly not by harming others, so even if it isn’t fair it isn’t completely unfair either. SEO outing to some websites by Google seems foolish coz even they hire SEO’s for search engines and what about their ads being the favorite hotspot of spammers and illegal websites?! It’s time we shunned the double standards of SEO outing!