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The Future of WebSite Ranking
by Mel Strocen ©Copyright 2003

The recent shakeup in Google's search results, which set the SEO 
(search engine optimization) community buzzing and saw tens of 
thousands of webmasters watch their site ranking plummet, was in
many ways inevitable. Almost all SEO companies and most savvy 
webmasters had a fairly good handle on what Google considered 
important. And since SEO, by definition, is the art of 
manipulating website ranking (not always with the best interests 
of searchers in mind), it was only a matter of time until Google 
decided to make some changes.  

If you've been asleep at the SEO switch, here are a few links to 
articles and forums that have focused on the recent changes at 
Google: 

Articles:
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2003/dec/1prt.html
http://www.searchengineguide.com/lloyd/2003/1125_bl1.html
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?cat=1
http://www.accordmarketing.com/tid/archive/google-update-florida.html

Forums:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/
http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::topiclist/forum::google/
http://www.searchguild.com/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=3d5d777a7a9c7dda31622896015f733a

To date, most of the commentary has been predictable, ranging 
from the critical and analytical to the speculative. 

Here's a typical example from one of our SiteProNews readers: 

"I'm not sure what has happened to Google's vaunted algorithm, 
but searches are now returning unrelated junk results as early 
as the second page and even first page listings are a random 
collection of internal pages (not index pages) from minor 
players in my industry (mostly re-sellers) vaguely related to 
my highly-focused keyword search queries."

So, what is Google trying to accomplish? As one author put
it, Google has a "democratic" vision of the Web. Unfortunately
for Google and the other major search engines, those with a 
grasp of SEO techniques were beginning to tarnish that vision 
by stacking the search result deck in favor of their websites.

Search Engine Optimization or Ranking Manipulation?

Author and search engine expert, Barry Lloyd commented 
as follows: "Google has seen their search engine results 
manipulated by SEOs to a significant extent over the past 
few years. Their reliance on PageRank™ to grade the authority 
of pages has led to the wholesale trading and buying of links 
with the primary purpose of influencing rankings on Google 
rather than for natural linking reasons." 

Given Google's dominance of search and how important ranking 
well in Google is to millions of websites, attempts at rank 
manipulation shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. For many, 
achieving a high site ranking is more important than the hard 
work it takes to legitmately earn a good ranking.

The Problem with Current Site Ranking Methods

There will always be those who are more interested in the end 
result than on how they get there and site ranking that is based 
on site content (links, keywords, etc.) and interpreted by 
ranking algorithms will always be subject to manipulation. Why? 
Because, for now, crawlers and algorithms lack the intelligence 
to make informed judgements on site quality.

A short while ago, author, Mike Banks Valentine published an 
article entitled "SEO Mercilessly Murdered by Copywriters!"
(http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2003/nov/21.html). The 
article rightly pointed out SEO's focus on making text and page 
structure "crawler friendly". Other SEO authors have written at 
great length about the need for "text, text, text" in page body 
content as well as in Meta, Heading, ALT, and Link tags. They 
are all correct and yet they are all missing (or ignoring) the 
point which is that the "tail is wagging the dog". Search 
engines are determining what is relevant, not the people using 
those engines. Searchers are relegated to the role of engine 
critics and webmasters to being students of SEO. 

SEO manipulation will continue and thrive as long as search 
engines base their algorithms on page and link analysis. The 
rules may change, but the game will remain the same.  

Therein lies the problem with all current search engine
ranking algorithms. SEO's will always attempt to position
their sites at the top of search engine results whether
their sites deserve to be there or not, and search engines
will continue to tweak their algorithms in an attempt to 
eliminate SEO loopholes. If there is a solution to this
ongoing battle of vested interests, it won't come from 
improving page content analysis.

Incorporating User Popularity into Ranking Algorithms
 
The future of quality search results lies in harnessing the 
opinions of the Internet masses - in other words, by tying 
search results and site ranking to User Popularity. Google's 
"democratic" vision of the Web will never be achieved by 
manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only 
be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and 
people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The 
true challenge for search engines in the future is how to 
incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their 
ranking algorithms. 

Website ranking based on user popularity - the measurement of 
searcher visits to a site, pages viewed, time viewed, etc. - 
will be far less subject to manipulation and will ensure a 
more satisfying search experience. Why? Because web sites that 
receive the kiss of approval from 10,000, 100,000 or a million 
plus surfers a month are unlikely to disappoint new visitors. 
Although some websites might achieve temporary spikes in 
popularity through link exchanges, inflated or false claims, 
email marketing, pyramid schemes, etc., these spikes would be 
almost impossible to sustain over the long-term. As Lincoln 
said "You can fool some of the people all the time. You can 
fool all the people some of the time. But you can't fool all 
the people all the time." Any effective ranking system based on 
surfer input will inevitably be superior to current systems.

To date, none of the major search engines have shown a serious 
interest in incorporating user popularity into their ranking
algorithms. As of this writing, ExactSeek 
(http://www.exactseek.com) is the only search engine that has 
implemented a site ranking algorithm based on user popularity.

Resistance to change, however, is not the only reason user data
hasn't made its way into ranking algorithms. ExactSeek's new
ranking algorithm was made possible only as a result of its 
partner arrangement with Alexa Internet, one of the oldest and 
largest aggregator's of user data on the Web. Alexa has been 
collecting user data through its toolbar (downloaded over 10 
million times) since 1997 and is currently the only web entity 
with a large enough user base to measure site popularity and 
evaluate user preferences in a meaningful way.

The Challenges Facing User Popularity Based Ranking

1. The Collection Of User Data
 
In order for web user data to play a significant role in search 
results and site ranking, it would need to be gathered in 
sufficient volume and detail to accurately reflect web user 
interests and choices. The surfing preferences of a few million 
toolbar users would be meaningless when applied to a search 
engine database of billions of web pages. Even Alexa, with its 
huge store of user data, is only able to rank 3 to 4 million 
websites with any degree of accuracy.  

2. Privacy

The collection of user data obviously has privacy implications. 
Privacy concerns have become more of an issue in recent years 
and could hinder any attempt to collect user data on a large 
scale. The surfing public would need to cooperate in such an 
endeavor and be persuaded of the benefits. 

3. Interest

Web search continues to grow in popularity with more than 80% 
of Internet users relying on search engines to find what they 
need. However, with the exception of site owners who have a
vested interest in site ranking, most web searchers have not
expressed any serious dissatisfaction with the overall quality
of search results delivered by the major engines. Harnessing
the cooperation and active participation of this latter and
much larger group would be difficult, if not impossible.

The future of web search and website ranking belongs in the 
hands of all Internet users, but whether it ends up there 
depends on how willing they are to participate in that future.

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Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites. The 
Jayde network currently consists of 12 websites, including 
ExactSeek.com (http://www.exactseek.com) and SiteProNews.com 
(http://www.sitepronews.com).
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