How SEO is breaking the web (and killing Google)
The web is in trouble. Big trouble. It's not the first time. It was also in trouble in the mid '90s. But then Google saved it, ushering in a new era of search. People forget how impossible good content was to find in those days. Critics routinely lambasted the web for the rubbish on it.
Those were the days of Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos and a host of search engines that would regularly return results of dodgy, random websites. It's not that there wasn't good content on the web, it's just that we couldn't find it very easily.
Google, with its lauded PageRank algorithm, was able to mine the beautiful diamonds in a very rough rough, mercifully elevating them to front pages of search results. Suddenly, when we searched, we found the good stuff. The bad stuff didn't disappear, it was relegated to its justified position in the content hierarchy: Obscurity. It's why Google suddenly emerged as the undisputed king of search and, all around it, rivals crumbled.
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About the author
Matthew Buckland is a web guy. He now dedicates his life and soul to [[http://www.creativespark.co.za/ Creative Spark Interactive]] and [[http://memeburn.com Memeburn.com]].