AW: [Air-l] Protection against unethical practices in search engineoptimization?

[S. Liban]

Hi Carmen!

> Why is this industry not properly regulated like email 
> marketing? Is it because it is too specific and doesn't 
> concern the mass consumers? The ones at risk of falling prey 

I cannot tell the US-side of things, but any regulation attempt in
Germany proved to be useless, as someone in another country can go on
with the fraud....and they do! Thats the boundless Internet!

Many unwanted E-Mail in Germany for example come from the
US/Russia/Austria/and so on...as laws regarding the
"not-asked-for"-mails seem do differ quite heavily...in Germany the
consumer is quite heavily secured by law...e.g. no (real)mailings can
be delivered, if the consumer has a "no ads"-sticker on his mail box
(the real one!) - in the virtual world, German companies cannot
contact anyone who did not ask for it...with a double opt in...

Search Engines:
E.g. Google.de is loosing more and more people/users/clients (or at
least so many web-agancies here state), as SPAM-sites tend to come up,
when searching...once a normal user clicks on the link, that looks
like exactly what one searched for, a site comes up, trying to install
a so called dialer, which wants to reconnect the user using a service,
which is unbelievably expensive...this works for ISDN and modem-users
only, but there still seem to be many using these "slow" techniques
(the ever growing German DSL-connections cannot re-connect with other
services - no tel-no. - at least for now)

Of course Google.de is still No1...but in IT-related environments,
mailing-lists, the other engines are regaining lost ground...so in a
year or two this will show with the consumer as well...if Google.de
does not find a way...
It's like "Tom&Jerry" or "Itchy and Scratchy" (for those, born
later)...an ongoing chase - one does not know, who is chasing who
anymore...

> For example, a business hires a SEO (search engine 
> optimization) company for a 3 months contract. The company 
> performs optimization so that it has complete control over 
> it. This means it can turn the results off with a click if 
> the business has any intention of getting out of the contract 
> at the end of 3 months. This is in my book highly unethical. 

You do have contracts? A company should take care of a well
thought-out contract regarding the property of the services, that a
SEO is to sign...

> There is a severe lack of information in this area to educate 
> business owners and help them make a wise decision.

Does that not apply to all aspects of the Internet? It is quite
young...quite unregulated and acutally more and more dominant in terms
of information-supply...

As always with a new era things seem quite chaotic at start...the
Internet is quite unregulated...Nazis or so called islamic terrorists
(nobody called the IRA or the other fractions in the civil war in
Northern Ireland "christian terrorists", by the way - or at least I
cannot remember - terrotists are just terrorists, if you ask me - not
to speak of "Christians" killing doctors in the name of God because
these offer abortions...) put up their sites to show off their own
views of the world, which is very different to ours (the majority of
the so called Western World, one hopes)...to say the least...

What I was actually trying to say is that history shows the beginning
of new eras always brought some confusion with it in its start...the
German history, especially the so called "founder years" of the
industralization ("Gründerjahre") in the late 19th century was not
that different...workers being exploited in a way, that most of us
find babaric today (or view so, when looking at "emerging"
countries)...not a coincedence, that Karl Marx lived exactly in this
age...

As a saying goes: "The market will regulate itself" ;) And it actually
will...I use Google, when I know, that I can specify the search
term...I use wikkipedia, when searching for things, that could be
listed there...and I most often use the url now...as it is faster,
when searching for a specific topic...I never thought of the url's in
2000 - always went to the search-site first (yahoo, google,
meta-engines).

> The internet is being marketed as a "level-playing field" 
> where the small guys can compete with the big boys but it is 
> precisely these small companies who are at their most 
> vulnerable. An unhappy experience with an unethical SEO 
> provider can mean short to medium term financial difficulties.

At least on this side of the "pond" medium and smaller companies have
great opportunities because of the Internet...and "big companies" are
pushing it...it is assumed, that at least 10.000 small companies have
been founded in Germany only because of eBay...e.g. people started
selling their used *whatever* and now have storages like medium
companies and make revenues that they can live of very comfortably...

Newspapers are loosing subscribers like hell (especially daily
newspapers)...news-sites are growing...the market is changing!

Of coures there are still obstacles to overcome...but there always
were...always will be....thats what evolution (in soacial/economical
terms) is about...

Think of the SCO legal action against LINUX...or the patents...someone
patented the "buy now"-button or the "content management system" or
the "Discoverability and navigation of hyperlinks via tabs"...in the
US.
All these things were in use for "ages" (in Internet-terms) before
they were patented...and these things are a big issue here in Germany
as the EU is trying to adopt the same apporach as the US to what we
call "trivial patents"...
Whats next? I thought of patenting receiving messages through POP and
replying through SMTP ;)

I guess this topic is quite off-list here...allthough Elijah likes it
here ;)

Have a great night (day - morning - wherever you are)!

sam