Google Goes Blogging

• Feb. 18, 2003

For those of you who are unsure, blogging (also called web logs) is a form of web communication that lets you post your thoughts, ramblings and ideas on the web quickly and easily.  It’s a kind of content management software that you can download for free and turn your opinions into a web page.  It also gives bloggers the opportunity to report on the news as they see it.

 

Blogging also has caused headaches for Google in the past forcing them to change their ranking algorithm.  This was because some inventful bloggers found out that if you encouraged other bloggers to put keyword links to your site you would rank quite high – number one even – for the key phrase.  What they would do is offer a kind of link exchange.  They would provide the html code (with the keyword link) to other bloggers to put on their blog site.  Sure enough, with enough support, these bloggers were able to rank in the top positions for many search phrases.  This was later referred to as “Google bombing”.

 

A guy by the name of Adam Mathes was the first person to deliver a “Google Bomb”.  Andy was able to rank a friend of his #1 for “Talentless Hack.”  He still ranks for this today – over a year after coming up with the idea.

 

So, enough history.  Why would Google purchase a company that is able to exploit its ranking algorithm, so badly?  After all, Google is extremely well known for how it ranks sites, and is considered the #1 source for serving the most relevant search results.  What could motivate Google to do this? Are they going to shut them down?  Not likely.

 

My theory is this – and it follows along the lines of a well known saying – “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.  If Google can’t control bloggers, maybe they can offer them a place to blog.  Just like Google News, or Froogle. Google, why not give bloggers a place of the web that’s all their own?

 

By doing this Google can quietly move all the blogs to a specific area and restore relevancy to its search results.

 

Pretty smart, huh?

 

Rob Sullivan

Searchengineposition.com - the Search Engine Optimization Specialists