Search Engines were one of the best friends of the Cyber Society. In the
days when Internet graduated from a technical tool to a Common man's
information super highway, search engines made it possible for the ocean
of information contributed by the global network of unpaid content creators to
be available to the public in an organized way.
The community respect enjoyed by Yahoo or Altavista or Google is a
reflection of the service rendered by Search engines to the community.
Of late however, the falling advertising revenues in the Internet business
has perhaps driven many service providers to abandon principles and adopt
business policies guided purely by commercial considerations. While it is the
right of any business entity to make money and Search Engines are perfectly
entitled to do the same, if the means adopted are such as to compromise the
fundamental nature of the business they are in today and for which they are
respected and which has given them the revenue generating opportunity,
this will lead to a gradual death of the entity.
Alta vista was the leading search engine a couple of years back and was
challenged only by Yahoo as a less efficient directory. However, over the last
few years Google has overtaken other search engines as the popular search tool
because it delivers results with a minimum of fuss. Altavista has become
irritating with too many pop up ads which diverts the minds of the research
oriented Search Engine user. Yahoo has retained its popularity more because of
its wide service base rather than for its efficiency in conducting a random
search.
With the increasing demand for Search engine listings in a manner FMCG
products cry for shelf space in a retail market, there has been an increasing
attention on "Increasing Search Engine Visibility". The first impact of this
market need resulted in the coming up of many "Submit Your Site" services
which promised high page rankings for a fee. These services specialized in
tweaking the source codes of the web pages trying to fool the automatic robos
to rank the client's web pages high on the list of results. Since the
objective of the search engine was to maintain its credibility, the battle was
between the ability of the search engine software to find sites which were
trying to cheat it and some times black list such sites.
It appears that of late some search engines might have abandoned their
principle of trying to deliver relevant results to their customers by
themselves joining in schemes that promote "Rankings based on the Money Paid".
The name of the game is "Premium Listings". The value added services they are
offering include, "Special Bold Listing", " Inclusion of Logos in the listing"
etc.
Recently, a US based Company has filed a case against three Search engines
including Altavista that they are using a ranking system which always places
the subject company's competitors listing above its own even when the search
query is the name of the Company itself. It is like when you are trying to
search for "Coke" the listing of "Pepsi" comes above that of Coke
..consistently.
The Company has sued the search engines for a compensation for the "Pay for
Placement" policy.
Apart from the legal issues involved in the case such as "Including the
trade mark of a competitor on the Meta tag etc, this has raised a fundamental
question on the reliability of the Search engine service. If this trend is not
curbed, very soon Search engines will lose their credibility with the common
netizen.
For those who know Cricket and the Indian craze in the game, it is worth
pointing out the similar tendency of commercial interests overtaking basic
objectives in a move initiated by the Mumbai Cricket Association in keeping
for sale less than 20 % of the tickets for a cricket match for the
public and selling the rest to corporates as a private sale as if the
India-England match is a private club affair. The advent of TV and related
commercial interests have already given a death blow to the spirit of the game
and the latest move only confirms that Commerce comes above all
considerations.
If similar commercial considerations need to be kept out of Search Engine
functioning, it is necessary to work towards ways and means of increasing
genuine advertising revenues for them so that they don't adopt devious ways of
making money. The challenge is therefore now on the Web advertising
industry to protect the norms of the society and also generate a revenue
stream for the businesses that are basic services in the Cyber society.
Naavi
February 2, 2002
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