[governance] Halal Search Engine

[Milton L Mueller]

You can pay to be listed in the CLEARLY MARKED and SEPARATED sponsored links, which in fact attract far fewer clicks than the regular ones. Google was the first to clearly separate them and NOT make their regular rankings depend in any way on payments, and that of course is why it won the market - it really was better for finding what you were looking for than the alternatives. That set the standard for Bing, which is actually a very good competitor now if you haven't tried it. All hail market competition! What a friend we have in....Mammon!! Genuflect to Market FUNDAMENTALISM ;-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Peter [mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com]
> Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 3:52 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Avri Doria
> Subject: Re: [governance] Halal Search Engine
> 
> ( a couple of people disputed this)
> 
> The most obvious example is that on any common Google search the first few
> results that come through may be sponsored links - identified as such if
> you
> have good eyes and bother to look, but the first results nevertheless. You
> can pay to be number one on a Google search results listing, that's the
> bottom line.
> 
> Beyond that - because Google doesn't release its algorithms this is
> unproven. But articles such as this http://www.seobook.com/google-branding
> do tend to suggest new factors coming into results.
> 
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance