When Google was founded in September of 1998 it’s mission was simple enough: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. They did this by creating what we now know as the PageRank algorithm, but was first called “BackRub“, in an attempt to create a better search engine than what AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, or Yahoo could provide.
The logic behind this idea was this: if the Community of Internet users decide that something is useful, then it must be the best answer and hence, the true answer.
The results of this logic have been a disaster.
Let me explain a bit further.
None of us is as dumb as all of us
It’s the classic de-motivational poster from Despair.com, and it’s perfect for this topic.
Don’t believe me? Check out the headlines over at Upworthy or Buzzfeed. Here’s Scott Hanselman detailing why such linkbait is garbage. Scott sums it up quite nicely with this quote:
“Apparently mining for Page Views is more profitable than mining for Bitcoin.”
Indeed. In the race to be on Page1 of Google we have learned we only need to generate traffic to our websites. The more links, the more traffic, the more weight we get in the page rank algorithm. Oh, sure, we could pay to be on Page1, and we can focus on SEO as a means to get eyeballs on our content. There are lots of ways to get to Page1 these days that didn’t exist in 1998.
And the result of those methods is this: the Internet doesn’t give a damn about making the world’s information universally accessible and useful. It only cares about page views and if it will blend.
When it comes to popular content on the Internet, none of us is as dumb as all of us. Each time we click on linkbait, each time we share a video of a cat, we help to make the world a little bit dumber.
Yes, I’m just as guilty as anyone else. But at least I know it’s happening. And now, so do you.
Wrong incentives
As a result of this, people are being incentivized on a global scale to attract page views. Marketing teams everywhere are told to focus on page views as a defining metric for their job. I once asked the question to a marketing director “would you rather have 1,800 page views, or 1 page view that resulted in $1,800 in sales?”
He chose the views. Everyone chooses the views. It’s the 21st century equivalent to cold calling.
And it’s a disaster.
Personally, I’d rather not resort to gimmicks. I don’t spend hours on SEO for this blog (and it shows!) I used to think about the best linkbait titles, but I don’t bother much anymore. I would much rather produce something of quality (and Someday™ I hope I do), and let that draw people in instead of tricks and gimmicks. In other words, I want the right eyeballs here, not just any eyeballs.
Besides, my incentives aren’t about page views (which are different than page hits). No, I get measured by something much more difficult to attain. It’s called “happiness”, and it’s what I ask my boss about during our reviews. It makes for a much better review than anything else I’ve had.
Stop measuring your worth in page views or hits. Start measuring it in happiness. If you do, you won’t believe what happens next.
What you can do?
So Google is making us dumber. What can we do to re-learn how to think for ourselves?
- Understand how Google works. The results on Page1 *may* not be all that useful, or even true. Relying on the Community of Internet users to decide for you what is best for a search result is about as useful as Wikipedia in that 80% of the time there is a 50/50 chance of being correct.
- Learn from your own experience. Don’t just listen to someone tell you that they lost 55lbs eating nothing but bacon-wrapped chicken thighs. Go try the diet for yourself to make sure it really works. (SPOILER ALERT: It won’t.)
- Spot the differences between someone trying to sell you something (like a product or a service) versus someone that wants to share their story (like a good blog post should). I find that most of Page1 links go to business blogs, as opposed to actual reference material or independent blogs.
- Use a different search engine every now and then, maybe one with pretty pictures. The results will amaze you!
And if that doesn’t work we can just create a Wikipedia article that declares Google to not be evil, and that the world’s average IQ is rising at a faster rate that the ocean sea level. Because once it’s on the Internet and a bunch of people link to it, it rises to the top of the search rankings, and therefore it must be true.
Excellent post.
“The results on Page1 *may* not be all that useful, or even true.” – I discovered this for myself the other week. I had a problem that had me poking around the third page of Google before I found an adequate answer.
Yes, I’m finding that I need to go a few pages deep these days as well.
or just use Bing and find it on page 1
Funny thing about that…I do find myself using Bing more and more these days.
Is rather get dumber with Google, than use Bing.
But in the beginning of the internet we had Alexa rankings where the popularity of your site depended on how well rated it was (manually, on a toolbar!) by users as they visited it. And yet that didn’t work in the end for some reason…
If I think now about how to bring that model back, my first thought is, “How can you validate these ratings are real, from real users, without an ulterior motive?” The system would just immediately be gamed, just like links are gamed, just like SEO is gamed.
It appears to be an almost intractable problem to solve.
I remember Alexa, but never really used it that much. And your point about “ulterior motive” is spot on. If it involves money then yeah, the system will be gamed. I have no evidence to support this, but I suspect humans have been doing this to each other ever since currency was invented.
It says a lot about the importance of page hits when blogs hosted on WordPress have page views as the *only* stats available. Doesn’t tell me anything of the readers thoughts on quality/usefulness.