June 2005
Searching in Vain
Search manipulations may help some companies rise through the ranks, but the practice leaves us looking for more.
By Celia Canfield
Along with everyone else in this age of constant communication, a lot of random information crosses my desk. But recently one piece caught my eye. A study conducted by AdMedia Partners surveyed some 1,000 executives at leading advertising and marketing services firms about their businesses. The stat that stuck out was that 52 percent of them saw search marketing as a growth area. Moreover, it was the most active growth sector within interactive marketing—that's a category that includes interactive advertising, CRM, affiliate marketing, interactive media, rich media, and others.
"Companies that provide useful, compelling content deserve to be rewarded by search engines." If you build it...
It doesn't surprise me that companies want to optimize their sites for search. The old adage, "build it and they will come" comes to mind. Anyone with a website knows that creating a flashy Web presence doesn't guarantee you visibility. That point was brought home to me by a presentation I attended recently from some SEO experts. They pointed out that in a Google search for Starbucks, the third-ranked site is www.ihatestarbucks.com. It seems that large companies are now spending lots of resources utilizing search techniques that push these kinds of "subversive" sites to lower pages. Of course, the ultimate example of this went around years ago: Type "miserable failure" into a search engine—it brings up some interesting results. And if that's not "manipulating" search algorithms I don't know what is.
I admit I have mixed emotions about engineering search functionality. Yes, a marketer should always try to control information about her company, and if I were CMO at Starbucks I'd be irked by the proximity of this not-so-complimentary site. But as a former magazine publisher, I was trained to believe that the credibility of an information source is built on its unbiased disclosure of facts and opinions—and that goes for search engines.
What if the phone book started reorganizing information based on subjective or paid for rankings? As a user, I'd be pretty annoyed. I recently experienced this frustration when I decided to research exercise equipment online. Clearly, that sector has gone through some search engine optimization, because it was almost impossible to find anything but infomercial testimonials in the first four pages of any search I conducted. So while I applaud the companies that commandeered the searches, it was an ultimately frustrating experience for me as a user.
Content is king
So where's the balance? The answer always seems to circle back to content. Companies that provide useful, compelling content deserve to be rewarded by search engines because they bothered to take the time to create content containing ideas, insight, and information on topics that people are searching out. The organic nature of rankings based on frequency of terms and the amount of space dedicated to a subject seems to be a fair tradeoff. If an automotive company talks at length about their commitment to alternative-fuel vehicles, I have no issue with their high ranking in a search for hybrid cars.
It's when a QVC product dominates a search because they've managed to use the word "hybrid" 500 times in their one-page site on an alternative-fuel car coffee mug that optimization gets a bad name.
About the author:
Celia Canfield is the CEO and founding partner of Tendo Communications. email her with your search successes and failures.
