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What if Google Had to Design For Google?
An anonymous reader writes "Web developers increasingly grow weary of having to put so much effort into designing their sites according to the whims of the Google search engine. When the most important thing is 'getting indexed' it is increasingly difficult for web site designers to offer the simple, uncluttered user experience they'd like to. Reminiscent of the famed what if Microsoft designed the iPod box here is a humorous look at what would happen to that famed, clean, uncluttered look if Google had to design for the Google Search Engine."
If Google were really designing for Google, they'd use CSS rather than font tags, and they'd wrap a big H1 around the Google logo (with appropriate alt and title tags). They'd also use lists for the... lists.
Would they HAVE any users if their PageRank was a little lower?
Or - if a web page is put up on a server, and nobody is there to surf it -- does it make an impression?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I think this is closer to the truth.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Now it looks like Yahoo. Perhaps Yahoo is trying really hard to remain relevant.
Exactly. The only people I hear constantly bickering about Googles metrics and pagerank, are those who have sites that no one would miss if they were gone tomorrow. If you really put social networking spam links on your page to up your pagerank, you're just an attention whore. That's not bad per se in a attention economy, but don't complain if I just laugh in your face if bad bad evil google sorts your petty site to the bottom of search results for "witty blog". Create something unique, needed. Like, say, a good search engine.
As a web developer, I can honestly say that my arch nemesis in any workplace is always the search engine optimization "expert". I have had to do so many stupid things because of those idiots it's insanity. I've actually written a couple of Daily WTFs about SEO folk.
The truth of the matter is that if you bother to play by the rules, Google will index your site just fine and if your site is popular you will end up high in the page rankings. If you want to become more popular through your page rank, you can always buy keywords, too. It's a really simple, non-mysterious process, but people get caught up and obsess about it and start paying consultants to torment their web designers and developers for no obvious gain.
( Interestingly enough, the company that had the SEO guy who didn't know his ass from his elbow was pretty much the only business doing what they did, was a Fortune 50 company, and absolutely refused to use metadata in their web site; instead of metadata they opted for super ridiculously long URLs. )
Google already does code for google. They're the first hit.
Seriously though, this article depresses me. The unspoken sentiment is that typical websites can't survive without google. Which implies that typical websites can't survive on word of mouth, aggregator sites, and features highlighting them on good websites. I can't think of a single site that I found through google. I use google to search large sites, go to sites with awkward URLs, or find one time use references. But apparently the good sites that can survive on word of mouth are not typical any more.
It really saddens me because it reminds me of TV. Shows that can that do well via word of mouth get canceled or messed with before the audience peeks, and many of the shows that succeed do so because they are they slightly appeal to many demographics rather then being really well received by a few. What happens when the start up costs for websites go up and you need substantial ads from the get go, will there be any new great sites, that aren't flukes.
In the end I don't think sites should be designed to optimize page rank, except for maybe online retailers that compete with other online retailers. If your site is good people will link to it and praise it and it's page rank will soar.
Wouldn't a surefire way to find the best Search Engine Optimizer be to google "Search Engine Optimization" and pick the first rank ?