ExactSeek’s Mel Strocen takes a look into Google’s new update, the future of website ranking, and obstacles of judging the popularity of a website in the Future of WebSite Ranking:
The future of quality search results lies in harnessing the opinions of the Internet masses – in other words, by tying search results and site ranking to User Popularity. Google’s “democratic” vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.
Website ranking based on user popularity – the measurement of searcher visits to a site, pages viewed, time viewed, etc. – will be far less subject to manipulation and will ensure a more satisfying search experience. Why? Because web sites that receive the kiss of approval from 10,000, 100,000 or a million plus surfers a month are unlikely to disappoint new visitors. Although some websites might achieve temporary spikes in popularity through link exchanges, inflated or false claims, email marketing, pyramid schemes, etc., these spikes would be almost impossible to sustain over the long-term. As Lincoln said “You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all the people all the time.” Any effective ranking system based on surfer input will inevitably be superior to current systems.
