Many thanks to @linuxchiq on Twitter for sharing a post from Librarian By Day which is focused on a TED talk by Eli Pariser about the danger of “personalized web results.” Here’s the talk:
If you’re like me, you probably snapped to attention when the Eli showed the difference in two friends’ results for the same search on Google. In fact, I freaked out a little. I spend 99% of my web life logged in to Google (and Yahoo! by way of Flickr). I’ve always felt like I was one of those people who could find stuff online — find anything — but how can I do that if some search results are excluded by way of algorithms?
My next thought was what does this mean for SEO? Does this explain the “cloak of invisibility” that some sites are stuck with? Does this mean it’s harder than ever to reach your audience? Going back to the two friends’ different results, from a web developer’s perspective, how can you ever tell your client that their page will come up “first page” on a search query?
And then a little dark part of me thinks the reason for this is simple: Google and Yahoo! can offer to put your page front and center for a price. Well no thanks guys. Looks like it’s time for a new search engine to come up the middle and blow both of you out of the water.
I am in total agreement. However, I think the moment for a new contender has probably passed, since the Internet has been successfully monetized. Google rose to prominence as an alternative during the period when the “???” era of the underwear gnomes still held true. The purpose of the algorithms Eli refers to is to try to sell us things we search for or click on. Everybody is producing search results for a price. A new search engine that comes up the middle will have to be unconcerned with selling you things, and I don’t see that happening (except outside the mainstream, and with pretty substantive coordination and effort by many people) since the Internet is mostly about money now. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic.