Quote, unquote: It's the links, stupid
-- From a posting on Scott Karp's Publishing 2.0Everyone talks about Google’s algorithms as if it were some giant artificial intelligence that had its own ability to judge the value of content.
The greatest irony of the web content economy is that Google by itself doesn’t have a clue what content is good or bad. Google is able to deliver relevant search results only because every site on the web helps them figure it out.
Google’s algorithm is based on reading “links” as votes for content. Every time a website links to another website, Google reads that link as a vote. The brilliance of the Google algorithm is its ability to figure out which votes should count more.
But without those links, without those “votes,” Google has nothing.
What Google “steals” from every website isn’t the content — it’s the links.
It’s the links, stupid. And everyone gives Google their links to read — for free!!
Google doesn’t really need your content, because there’s plenty more where it came from. What Google really needs is your links, i.e. your votes for content — it needs your help separating the wheat from the chaff on the web.
Labels: quote
posted by D. B. Scott at
1:30 pm
1 Comments:
And this is one of the big reasons I promote the use of social tools for magazines. Every inbound link increases your site SEO as well as reach into new spaces so readers can find your content. Additionally, magazine editors formatting their content for the web really need to include more outbound links in the copy. This is the gold standard for online writing and magazines lag behind where the many-to-many, read-write culture is concerned. Well chosen outbound links say several things about your publication and view of your readers: 1) We understand web usability writing and want to ensure our content is engaging to web user-readers 2) we are aware that our readers may go to another website to find further information on this topic and have taken a moment to provide them with a few relevant links (thus transforming an otherwise intersting "read" into a useful RESOURCE) 3) we know enough about the web to know that including outbound links in our stories says we believe ourselves to be part of a larger conversation - not a "one way" channel.
The best online magazines understand and respect the importance of user-focused writing and editorial choices.
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