Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Claria's RelevancyRank.

At first glance the idea of measuring consumer behavior technology makes sense. Using human visitors to validate the relevance of a site to the search that was performed would be a great way of establishing user approval of the search results.

However weighting a search algorithm towards such methods has several significant downfalls. For a start the prospect of being able to influence a sites position by just clicking on a search results fills me with dread.

It would be so open to abuse, how long would it take for the "blackhat" SEO's to employ teams of "clickers" or devise a computer program, that would run from behind the anonymity of a proxy server, perform searches, click on links 24/7 and navigate sites they wish to positively influence?

Secondly how would a new site ever get a high listing? If an existing site has a lot of traffic, a new site would never be able to achieve high enough traffic to compete because it cannot attain a high enough search engine listing, 'cos it doesn't have the traffic. A chicken and the egg situation.

And thirdly if a link on a site linking to another site is being counted as a vote for relevance because of the traffic it generates, then does this not mean that those with large advertising budgets will do better than those with smaller budgets?

From it's initial concept the internet was a great leveler, smaller "mom and pop" sites could sit alongside major corporate's and each would have a fighting chance at the top of the listings. Although I agree with the concept and agree that search engine optimisers do currently abuse the system with erroneous links, changing one type of abuse for another doesn't seem that helpful.

At the end of the day it is about user experience, fulfilling the search criteria to the best of their ability. The fact is that the vast majority of Search Engine Optimisers want the same. There is no point driving traffic to a site for an inappropriate relevance, no-one benefits. I am hoping that the technology is used with care.

M.P

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