Google

Google began life at Stanford University in California. It was a research project in the computer science department around the end of 1997. Two students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, worked on the project together, and eventually started the company which came to be known as Google. These students received a large sum of venture capital and Google was born.

According to the Google fact sheet, "Google is a play on the word googol, which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web."

In the middle of the year 2000, this relatively obscure search engine was catapulted to the top when Yahoo decided it would use it as the primary engine. In the years since that time, many other portals, including Netscape, have begun using this search engine for their results.

On June 26, 2000, Google announced that it's search engine indexed over one billion pages. This made it by far the largest search engine on the web. at that time Google powered over 30 million searches a day.

To submit your site, you only need to submit the home page. Google will spider the rest of your site for you. However, Google prefers to "find" your site listed on other pages; in fact, it sometimes appears that submitting your site directly is a futile exercise.

Up until Google hit the scene, most other search engines based their ranking (the method whereby the search engine determined which sites will be listed first on the results pages) on elements on HTML pages. These included the text, metatags, ALT tags and other things as well. This was useful, but spammers quickly subverted the process by making pages appear to be something else so as to divert searchers onto their pages.

Google attempted to provide better results to surfers by basing the ranking of pages on links to the pages from other web sites. The theory was the more links to a site, the more "popular" it is. Carrying it even further, links from higher ranking sites rates much better than links from lower ranking sites. This, a single link from a site with a page rank of 8 is better than a hundred links from sites with page ranks of 6.

Commentary

Unfortunately, there is a war being fought right now. The war has been going on since the first search engines appeared, and since the difference between a bad PR and a good one can make or break a company, then it's easy to understand why people try and subvert the rules. Wars have innocent bystanders who get nuked just because they are in the wrong spot. I think that's exactly what is happening. The vast majority of websites are run by good, honest people whose only desire is to say something and be heard by some people (or to make an honest living).

It seems to me that this majority is being harmed (severely due to Google's market share) by the acts of a few misguided or even evil souls.

I don't spam search engines. I have used Zeus in the past because I wanted (and still want) to guide my visitors to resources which might be of benefit to them. I trade links with other sites because I feel my site may be of benefit to THEIR visitors, and thus two sites of similar topics can help each other.

I use ALT tags because of accessibility and because of the tool tip feature. I use meta description because I want a nice description in the search engines (including my own PERL version). I use meta keywords to help categorize my pages to research sites and research related search engines. I use meta PICs to inform browsers that my site is family oriented. I have started titling all of my tables because that helps screen readers. I've started using the various LINK tag options to define my site structure to external agents.

I've got a very well defined site map because it helps my visitors. I've got "what's new" pages for the same reasons.

I join Webrings because these are a way to build internet communities and to receive (and give) highly targeted traffic.

I use several viral marketing techniques including Ecards, tell-a-friend scripts and so on to advertise my site.

I maintain four newsletters (all double-opt-in) to keep people informed.

And on and on.

None of this has anything to do with search engines. It has to do with making my site more useful to people.

I shouldn't be penalized for any of this. This is what the internet and web is all about. Communication. Community. Making an honest living. Increasing one's ability to connect with other people and places.

And that's my objection to the route chosen by Google - it appears, on the surface at least, to discourage honest webmasters and to even penalize them. It's kind of like making rules that say no one can swim in this lake because someone dumped trash in a lake in another county. I like the approach of catching and penalizing the few people who dump trash into lakes instead of discouraging swimming altogether.

And I have no objection to getting educated on those things that DO effect my page rank. Thanks to all of you who have done so. I just wanted to take the opportunity to make my own point of view on the matter known.