Earned Exposure

Excerpt from Google’s “How Search Works > Crawling & Indexing”

Computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. Google doesn’t accept payment to crawl a site more frequently for our web search results. We care more about having the best possible results because in the long run that’s what’s best for users and, therefore, our business.

Dad: “I typed ‘www.websitejustposted.com’* in the box at the top of my browser but our site didn’t show up in the list of results…”

Me: “Did you type it in the address bar or the search engine bar?”

Dad: “I don’t know.”

Me: “The box on the right is probably your Google search, the one in the center or left is your address bar.  Try typing it in that one.”

Dad: “I want our site to show up first in Google.”

Me: “Well hey, I want to be a foot taller… Sorry, that’s out of my hands.”

Dad: “Who do we pay so we show up first in their results list?”

Me: “It doesn’t work that way.  It’s a ranking-based algorithm that only Google controls.  Our site’s ranking depends on many factors: how long it’s been posted, who has viewed it and what sites link to it, among other things.  We’ve been up three days. Hopefully our ranking will improve with time as more people access it.”

Dad: “Hopefully!?!”

Me: “Welcome to the information age.  Besides the fact that most search queries are conducted  by private organizations, ranking-based search results are one of the few vestiges of commercial independence that remain on the internet.  It’s a good thing exposure cannot be bought.  At least not yet.”

Dad: “Says you.”

Me: “Think about it.  If you could buy your website’s ranking in Google, couldn’t a richer organization pay more for theirs to be placed ahead of yours regardless of its content or quality?  Do you think the internet would be useful to anyone if that were the case?”

Dad: “Guess I never thought of it that way.”

*Not the actual URL.