search engine objectification

In financial markets, as the fund under your management grows bigger, it becomes increasingly harder to beat the market because you become the market itself. Of course, when you are the equation, analysis become impossible and loss of objectivity is immediate.

A similar observation holds for the search engine market. Google has become such a dominant player that now it is impossible to tell whether a site is inherently popular or popular due to Google itself. When internet browsing starts and ends with Google, Google ends up running its algorithms on itself and creates strong positive feedback loops.

There is another reason why search engine market is losing its objectivity. When you are as big as Google you can not keep anything secret. Google's search algorithms are under such an intense scrutiny that there is now a whole new industry that helps companies optimize their Google visibility. When you define success in a formulaic way, people will hire experts who engage in the dark art of fooling your metrics. There is no surprise in that...

There is only one hope to bring back objectivity to the search engine market: Give the power back to the people. Reputation and popularity are inherently social concepts... Just focus on the dynamics and semantics of social media exchanges, whoever does not will always be behind the curve.