Why Has The Internet Become a Popularity Contest?
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 9/26/2016 10:59:32 PM
The Internet puts too much emphasis on popularity.
In the early days of the Internet, search engines focused on ranking pages based on content. It was a pretty simple system. If you were looking for a web page with a certain word or phrase on it, the search engines would find pages that seemed to focus on whatever you searched for, based on the words on your page.
Unfortunately, many people exploited the early search engines by repeating certain keywords all over their page so that the pages would seem like a good match. Google revolutionized search engines by including one extra criteria in their search algorithms, the number of other web sites that link to the page. The thought behind it was that if there are 500 websites that point to a page about Star Trek, chances are it's probably a better match for people looking for Star Trek information than a site that only has 2 sites pointing to it.
Once again, people started to exploit the newer search algorithm, by intentionally building bogus pages that would link to their sites. It got to a point where some really bad sites had tens of thousands of links pointing to them just to make them seem popular to the search engines.
Google's solution was to change their search algorithm once again to add yet another layer of popularity, social media. The though behind this is that regardless of the number of sites that link to a page, they would measure the actual popularity of a page as judged by the number of people who either Like, Share, or Tweet about it on social media.
Of course, this now creates yet another area for people to exploit their algorithm, by using a combination of bogus social media accounts, and even legitimate accounts to generate social media buzz.
Regardless of whether a page gets the majority of their social media attention from real people, that doesn't mean that the page it links to is the best possible search result for any given search term. In fact, there's a good chance that most of their social media buzz was from "Click-Bait" pages that use all sorts of unethical techniques to encourage people to click on photos or links.
For example, many web sites will create graphics that say something like "Share this if your daughter is beautiful", or "Share this if you love your country" that make people feel obligated to share or like their page.
To make matters worse, every time somebody clicks on a page in a search engine, it increases the site's popularity, making it even harder for a new page to displace it.
The bottom line is that the Internet has become a massive popularity contest, making it hard for new sites or pages to get noticed. Adding social media links didn't solve the problem, it made it worse. Search engines like Google and Bing need to re-think their emphasis on popularity, and find a better way to rank pages based on their content.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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