Everyone with a little knowledge about search engines understands that the most valuable today is the google search engine. Given the number of websites out there, the fight to feature at the top of google rankings is intense. Corporations therefore go about it by trying to take rig websites to ensure that they feature prominently on the search game. Google has responded to the quest of corporations and site owners to manipulate the search engine by readjusting the algorithm that produces it results to account for the manipulation by content farms.
As explained in this piece in the Guardian, these content farms try to manipulate the search engine by generating lots of popular words and sticking those to websites which exist purposely to ensure that they show up in searches. Such systematic attempts to raise the profile of a business is obviously not illegal but may artificially inflate the frequency of a firm's appearance in common searches. David Segal of the NYT explored the same phenomenon in this intriguing article which shows how a number of websites constructed to generate high ranking in search were implemented and led to successful results.
For a lay person, the story illustrates the fact that a prominent website presence has lucrative value and this makes the decision to try and manipulate the search engine all but inevitable. In addition, it shows that a dominant search engine such as Google must always be on the look out to ensure the integrity of results because once people understand the rough manner in which the ranking of pages is established, then they will try to manipulate it. In this way, Google's strength is also its weakness.
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