Search engine optimization, almost by definition, implies that there is a difference between what is good for PEOPLE to see and what is good for ranking in SEARCH ENGINES.

It’s certainly true that there is a difference. As anybody who has searched and surfed knows all too well – you often don’t find what you need and often find things you’ll NEVER need.
It’s not clear to me that things are improving as huge amounts of irrelevant and junky content continues to find it’s way despite valiant efforts by very sharp teams of spam fighters at places like Google.

However, Search Engine Optimization as “gaming” the engines to give your own results rather than more appropriate ones is dying fast and may soon be dead. Good SEOs emphasize the importance of quality content, natural linkings, good site navigation and tags, and other basics, and many no longer even try to “spoof” results with manipulative schemes which can lead to penalties by the search engines.

Less spoofing and more quality is a good thing as it will allow all of us in publishing to work on better content and user experience. At the point where good SEO is simply creating a great website the entire concept of SEO starts to lose it’s value as a marketing framework.

I read and know a lot of REALLY good SEO people – some of the best in the world are regulars at the WebmasterWorld and SES conference series, but it’s hard to separate some of the fact from fiction since they feed their kids by promoting the idea that SEO is still a critical piece of advanced internet strategy rather than a dying art.

What is very clear and rarely disputed by anybody is that, aside from the basics (which you’ll find HERE with some great technical clarifications HERE and HERE, masterful SEO is art not science and may be a dying art.

That’s a good thing as it will allow us to work on better content and user experience.

At the point where good SEO is simply creating a great website I’m not sure the concept of SEO has much value at all.

Amr at Yahoo analyzed the 4th quarter situation at GOOG and appears to have called the shot brilliantly. I think it was an intriguing example of how an insider at the *competition* can see things that even savvy investors might miss. That said I need to check to make sure Amr was right for the right reasons – ie revenue issues vs earnings.

If he IS right for right reasons I think I’ll act on his advice NEXT time, knowing the market is slow on the uptake when it comes to processing dot com stock pricing information (example is virtually every dot com stock of 1999).

Meanwhile, Om Malik writing for CNN seems to miss the point, suggesting this is just a little dip in Google’s rise to global dominance.

Anybody, especially siliconized, who suggests that there is no doubt in the future of a company evolving as fast as Google is simply not paying attention. With a capitalization still exceeding that of some nations, Google is hardly comparable to a startup. Sure Google might take over the world – they are a fantastic company. But they also may, heaven forbid and cross yourself, make some big mistakes. Many think they have already made some. AOL deal, China deal, DOJ non-deal.

If the price drop immediately following the “less than spectacular” earnings report yesterday was a “knee jerk” as Om suggests, it was more consistent with reality than the rising price last year which I rarely heard described as anything but consistent with the company’s performance.

I’m simply floored by those who should know better to imply that *this time* the huge stock price and expectations are “realistic”.

OH REALLY?

DISCLOSURE I – I’ve got some GOOG puts, which means I’m potentially biased here. But only potentially, I’m going to call it like I see it and my blog is hardly market-moving commentary.
DISCLOSURE II – Google pays me to run adsense ads at several of my websites and I appreciate the cash and T shirts.
DISCLOSURE III – I know several people who work at Google. They are nice and super smart and I wish them the best.
DISCLOSURE PS – I hope this doesn’t mean I can’t go to the Google Dance 2006. I still think Google is great, just very strangely priced.

This has been popping up a lot lately at Google.cn, Google’s new search engine for China:

据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。

You don’t understand? I don’t either but I’m told that it basically means “these results are censored” and it is the disclaimer for Google as they post results that have been modified according to specs provided by the Government of China.

I have not been as critical as most of Google’s decision to censor results for several reasons. The best have been articulated by Bill Gates at Microsoft. Gates echoes many of the sentiments expressed in this official post by Google about Google Censorship:

Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel for Google notes China’s
… embrace of a market economy and its lifting of 400 million people out of poverty …

China critics give these accomplishments short shrift. Life comes before liberty, and to enjoy both you must have adequate living conditions. It’s not clear to me that it’s our right or our job to tell China how to meet the needs of the world’s largest population.

McLaughlin continues:
But how is that full access most likely to be achieved? We are convinced that the Internet, and its continued development through the efforts of companies like Google, will effectively contribute to openness and prosperity in the world. Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.

I’m not as optimistic as Google about the future of censorship in China but I’m also tired of hearing the shrill commentary implying that we’ve “perfected” free speech here in the USA. “All the free speech money can buy” is hardly a perfect model for a free and open democracy.

Sure, a thoughful speaker has the right to challenge or discuss any political point of view, but even the finest and most intelligent debates are (usually) lost in the din of “news” about celebrity crimes and propaganda by the celebrity spokespeople for the mindless.

Luckily the internet is a far more powerful distributive mechanism than most reckon and the spread of information will flow past most of the roadblocks very quickly. This is happening in the USA thanks to websites and blogs that challenge conventional wisdom and the abundant commercial forms of speech that effectivly censor debate and it’s starting to happen in China as people learn to beat the filters and access the “free and open” global internet. China will soon see that censorship will likely have the unintended consequence of focusing attention on the very topics they seek to hide.

When you are involved with something on a regular basis – in my case internet publishing and marketing stuff – it’s hard to determine the extent to which THE world revolves around this stuff as opposed to just YOUR world.

These days it sure feels like I’m a small part of the global storm – now a hurricane – which is growing in intensity, sweeping away old business models like so much straw, and reshaping the way Governments, business, and most importantly people grow, thrive, and sometimes fail in this brave new Xth wave world. Hey – I coined Toffler and Huxley in the same sentence!

Davos’ theme this year is creativity and (naturally?) the top idea about the theme came from Google’s Marissa Mayer. More about that later…

One little eye of one of the big hurricanes usually called “Web 2.0” is the mashup camp coming in February. I’m very excited about it because I agree with many who suggest that mashups represent a significant new trend in online activity. Blogs and mashups are putting users and small time programmers back in control in powerful and unexpected ways.

Most importantly big online programming behemoths – especially Yahoo and Amazon but also Google and MSN, are facilitating the mashup frenzy with increasingly robust APIs. These often involve mixing maps and other data, but in the case of Amazon they are pretty much releasing the search engine application itself which should lead to a flurry of rich search mashup applications.

Who’s going to mashup camp? Yahoo’s top blogger JZ will be there, as will MSN’s top blogger Scoble and many others from Google, Yahoo, MSN, media. But most important may be the unknown little geeks working away in their garage on the next big idea. Giving away the prize for the best mashup will be no less than the president of Sun Microsystems Jonathan Schwartz.

The big guys understand that the little guys are making a big difference. I’m cool with that.

Google just can’t seem to keep out of the big spotlight whether you are talking stocks, global economy, politics from Davos, DOJ subpoenas, and most currently censorship of content at Google.cn, the chinese edition of Google.

Regarding China Google censorship:

What intrigues me is that there is no doubt that the triumverate who rules Google -founders Brin and Page and CEO Schmidt, are excellent guys and their intentions are in line with what most would consider legitimate, in fact lofty, global goals.

To think otherwise is simply to fail to pay attention to the way Page and Brin designed the site and the company, how Google got big, and how it has stayed a global leader. Google’s top blog informal “spokesengineer” Matt Cutt’s follows the general tendency of Google to be very introspective and even posts addresses of sites critical of Google.

But something is out of whack when they are fighting the DOJ’s mundane request for search data yet caving to the Chinese Government’s censorship requirements.

I do think onliners generally make way too much of censorship, which we ALL practice in many forms in many contexts. A dirty joke would be fine at a football party, yet it would be an abusive act if told by the same person in a kindergarten class. If a teacher was fired for telling their kindergarten class dirty jokes most would have no objection. This is a form of censorship and it’s perfectly legitimate.

Political censorship is anathema to democracy and Americans are rightly very protective of free speech, especially in the political context. But it’s hardly absent here. American right and left wing seem determined to brand their opponents as treasonous or deserving of impeachment or worse.

It’s an effort to shout down or chill debate and it, too, can be a form of censorship, especially when those who control the means of speech have hidden agendas. Fox News spouts even the most mindless conservative tripe while giving short shrift to intelligent liberal points of view. Fox’s Roger Ailes claim they are just helping to “balance” a “liberal media” but this is fodder for the mindless. Any clear thinker would agree that *Fox censors liberals*. That said, pretty much all media outlets censor Nazis, KKK, Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, and many other points of view for many reasons.

So, where is the high road? I sure don’t think Google’s found it, but that may just means they are in good company with the rest of us.

I’ve been “tagged” by uberBlogger YahooMeister Jeremy Zawodny to share “My four things”:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1. Short order breakfast cook
2. Grad Student Researcher, Southern Oregon University
3. Webmaster/Online Marketing
4. Travel Internet Publisher Guy

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. 2001 A Space Odyssey
2. Lord of the Rings I
3. Hero
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. Charlie Rose
2. American Experience
3. NOVA
4. Boston Legal

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

1. Kilauea
2. Mount Katahdin, Maine
3. Chartres
4. Westminster Abbey

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Shrimp Scampi
2. Steak and Potatoes
3. Chow Mein
4. Imitation Tupperware

Four websites I visit daily:

1. Matt Cutts
2. John Battelle
3. Jeremy Zawodny
4. Google

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. 2506 A.D.
2. Nanjing, China
3. Indigo Girls Concert
4. Half Dome, Yosemite

Four bloggers I am tagging. I’m skeptical they’ll play BUT there are always unforeseen consequences to stopping chain-like viral memetic things. If Jeremy Z can share the mundane details that reflect on one’s greater world view… so can … you.

1. Matt Cutts
2. Amr Awadallah
3. Dave Naylor
4. Rob Spooner

On Tuesday I thought I was going to get quoted in none other than the Wall Street Journal, but the online story doesn’t mention me at all. What am I going to tell my parents NOW!?

They still seem to wonder how I make a living online and I sure could have used the credibility boost from WSJ.

I’d been interviewed about my take on del.icio.us and digg.com and social networking and tagging in general because I’d blogged about how I thought they were cool, and then after using them thought they were overrated. Jessica Vascellaro of WSJ found me on technorati.

But this is some consolation – a few weeks ago I ordered a copy of David Vise’s “The Google Story”. I was checking out the pictures and there was Matt Cutts talking to a group at SES. Looking closer I could see…. me among the listeners.

Guess I’ll just be living in the shadow of fame.

There used to be a neat show on cable called “Tech TV”, which catered to geeks of all ages and discussed computer news, hardware and software items of interest to computer people, and more.

The show’s been effectively replaced, or perhaps cancelled in favor of, shows about computer gaming. This is interesting and reflects the growing challenges of a computer generation that is more interested in simulated chain saw massacres than programming and technology.

Yes, there are many who like BOTH these things, but forces have converged now that make it unnecessary to know any programming or hardware skills to become an accomplished gamer.
This was NOT the case in the past when the community needed to do more programming, hacking, and hardware modifications to get things going right.

More importantly gaming is more fun and we have a new leisure class that appears not to understand the relationship of work to fun. Exceptions? Of course there are. I think many of the tech elite are doing fine in all respects. HOWEVER who will be the NEW tech elite – the guys who are spending 60 hours per week playing Halo and the rest watching TV? I think things are changing in dangerous ways.

This is more of the stuff discussed in the brilliant “The World is Flat” by Tom Friedman. Noting the seriousness with which Chinese and Indian Engineers take on the challenge of the new global technologies he observes that in China Bill Gates is “Britney Spears”. In America? …. Britney Spears is Britney Spears.

…Ooops, we did it again…

Blogging has become the rage both as spectator sport and participatory democracy. Yet problematic is today’s news that the Washington Post has stopped accepting comments at their blog. Why? Too much junk and too much abusive posting.

Challenges facing blogs are many: they include Commercial Challenges (people use them in junky ways to promote commercial stuff such as setting up a blog called “cell-phones-for- sale” with little or not content except ads. Also blog posts are used to promote linking to sites. The widespread use of the nofollow attribute and nofollow aspects to blogging helped reduce this SEO tactic but it’s still going on with affects that appear to vary depending on search engine and blog.

Also a challenge is the Popularity of blogs. Even good bloggers waste a lot of digital ink, and it’s hard to sort through the posts at millions of blogs to get the good stuff. Tools like Digg.com help sort the mess but as noted before leave much to be desired as search tools.

My biggest beef with blogs is the one-sided nature of the blog. Most readers are thoughtful people, and I doubt they’ll continue to put much time into commenting unless a way can be found to raise the prominence of good commentary. But this of course makes the Commercial challenge an even bigger threat to quality and can lead to actions like the Washington Post’s comment ban.

So where’s it all headed? I think both websites and blogs are moving in the direction of serving increasingly specific niches of interest rather than the web at large. The popularity of tech centric sites like Digg.com and Technorati support this, as does the popularity of a very targeted blogs like “breaking search news” over at John Battelle’s place.