It’s not so very long ago that I used to subscribe to the notion that AOL and Yahoo believed they owned the Internet and had the right to control it. The over-the-top war on spam a clever smoke screen whilst our monitors were pumped with pop-ups that generated them millions.
During the last couple of years however, it seems that ownership of the Internet has been surrendered to a new overlord! GOOGLE! And we should all point our prayer mats to face Mountain View CA… Or should we?
For those of us involved in any form of search engine optimization (SEO), we are led to believe that if our websites are not recognised and accepted by our new master, then we are doomed to internet failure. Currently, there are hundreds of tutorials available within the Internet fraternity, offering tips, tricks and secret formulae ‘guaranteed’ to make our pages “Google-Friendly”, and presented in a format which will be acceptable to this Search Engine Giant. Yet who knows what is acceptable to Google and what is not?
Google’s regular algorithm changes are becoming more and more unpredictable and this deceit presents the potential for...