You’re Just Not Important Enough!
Posted on October 17, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
You’re not important enough. I’m not important enough. In percentage terms almost nobody is important enough.
It’s worth remembering next time you have an impulse to declare Google broken.
This posting was prompted by an, admittedly funny, recent parody – What if… Google had to be designed for Google. It got a lot of attention from many blogs and social news sites. I don’t have a problem with the parody itself but it brought out of the woodwork those who mistakenly believe that it holds some sort of deep truth.
The sort of tactics identified in the parody are not what have to be done to rank in Google they are only what you need to do to rank better in Google if you are not important enough.
Google got where it was by doing something (search) considerably better than anything else around at the time. If it seems run of the mill now that is only because everybody else followed its better way of doing things.
“Ah but it still does not rank well for ‘search engine‘” some will cry. True, but then why would it. It has considered its goals and audience (why do so many of my blog posts revolve around that to do?) and how many people are going to use a search engine to search for a search engine. If a search engine makes itself important enough that you know its name then you might try searching for that and Google does indeed dominate Google’s results for “Google“. It has no need for tricks to either increase its keyword density or link popularity. Due to its importance it also has no need to facilitate social bookmarking in order to get anything significant bookmarked.
Now what the response to this parody reminded me of, and the reason for this post, is the number of whiners in web development forums complaining that Google is broken, and claiming Google will soon be overtaken by MS, Yahoo, MyGrandmotherSays etc, because their own site does not rank well or indeed at all.
Again, you have to consider Google’s goals. Basically, they want searchers to find what they are looking for as easily as possible. A single spam site appearing in the top 10/30/50 can have a significant effect on that goal. Your site, my site, his site, their site not appearing does not have a significant effect. We’re not just unimportant, we’re insignificant. We’re acceptable collateral damage in the war against Serp Spam. Be honest, would the online world fall apart if your site just was not indexed? In the vast majority of cases the answer to that is no. Other sites will pick up the slack and the searcher will still find what they were looking for.
How do we become significant/important. Well, follow Google’s example and make yourself important. Start by doing your best to provide content, or a service, that is significantly better, or at least interestingly different, than anybody else’s. If you’re copying something else you’re not important – people can already find the service/content without your “addition” to the web.
Then you need to gain reputation for your important, significant, new site without using the search engines initially – social bookmarking, be active and useful on relevant forums and blogs, press releases, friends, colleagues, on-line and off-line advertising etc. Do not spam any of these, if your site is important enough then you should not need to anyway.
Even with non-search promotion methods, have a realistic view of your own importance. Just as it is unlikely that you deserve to rank number 1 in the big three for every keyword on your site, it is equally unlikely that every one of your “scintillating” blog posts deserves to be on the front page of Digg, Reddit, Netscape etc. Again, consider your goals and audience. For example, my previous post, “You Shouldn’t Be a Web 2.0 Developer If You Don’t Find These Funny” got promoted to the front page of DZone 
(which surprised me given the general level of seriousness of the submissions on DZone but apparently even programmers are human) resulting in a couple of thousand visits but managed a measly 3 diggs 
(with naff all traffic).
There is no free lunch any more. The web has become very competitive. It is still a leveller to some degree but you will have to work to establish your reputation just as you would off-line. The bonus is that not only will this help establish your importance to the search engines but will also generate traffic so that you are not so dependant on the search engines to begin with.
This may not be easy but it is considerably more effective than spending your time whining on the various social media sites that have already built their reputations by actually being important.
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