There is a fascinating article in the Canadian Financial Post on Geosign, a company that took in $160M in venture capital funding in March 2007 only to fall apart a year later because their business model consisted of gaming the search engines, known as “search arbitrage” which is nothing more than sending people who click on a Google ad to a web page that seems to have content, but is nothing more than a page with lots of online ads linking to the original search term. To read more, click here.

This is similar to the link farms a few years ago, a business model that Google also killed by simply changing its algorithm.

Google is in the business of ensuring that searches have integrity. In other words, if I search for a boutique hotel in Paris, I want to see sites that talk about or review boutique hotels, and boutique hotels themselves. Now Google can place ads for boutique hotels or hotels bookings sites on the right-hand side. These ads are paid for by those businesses. That’s okay. We understand that the right-hand side is for paid placements. But the left-hand side should give the user what he or she expects and that is good content that is not high up on the list simply because someone paid for it.

Thus, when companies like Geosearch “dirty” up the search universe, Google has to change its algorithm to prevent Geosearch websites from rising above sites that actually deliver high quality content.

There is no shortcut to creating a website or blog that brings a lot of traffic. You must create content that people want to read or watch regularly. This takes time and it is, at the core, a publishing business. Companies that try to get around this in a lazy fashion by using technology will not succeed.

[via Techcrunch]

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