If Google were to, for some odd reason, shut down their website and never do business again starting tomorrow, how could you guarantee traffic delivery? Aaron Wall posts a great idea, stating that:

…some of the best SEOs think of the web more in terms of the Cluetrain Manifesto, viewing the web as a series of markets and conversations, realizing that if they are frequently talked about then search rankings are a by-product of that.

Web traffic as a by-product of human popularity and not direct search engine rankings: now there’s an idea!

It’s a known fact that Google’s mission is to index (or read) web pages with the hopes of providing the most relevant content to its search customers. But how many websites can Google possibly index? All of them?? HA!! That is a monumental feat even beyond the oh-so powerful Google. The fact is that many websites are part of the invisible web (or deep web); these websites are sitting out there in la-la land with no visible web(sites) linked to them. This means that no matter how relevant these invisible websites are they will never show up on Google, or any other search engine, without some help.

There’s a very interesting article by Raj Dash on this subject; read the full article here.

The invisible web is much larger than the visible chunk. This means that only a small portion of all web pages are actually being indexed by the major search engines on a regular basis. If your business website is not being indexed, and thus is not visible to potential customers, then you are not maximizing your profits. There are many ways to make your website visible to the millions of consumers who search on a daily basis. Raj lists several ways to do this in his article referenced above, but these are only a fraction of the steps necessary in order to get your website the Best Rank possible.

Don’t be content with languishing in the invisible web; make your website visible. Take the steps necessary so that search engines like Google can index your page. If you are unsure of how to do this or you simply don’t have the time, then please contact us here and we can help resurrect your website into the visible kingdom of the web.

I recently read an article on Bees and hive-mind intelligence. About
how “a colony of individuals, operating according to simple rules, can
exhibit an intelligence, problem solving ability and even memory that
is beyond the limits of any of the individuals themselves.”

You can read the full article here

The article talks about how neurons are to a person’s mind as bees are to the “hive-mind” intelligence that forms when bees form a working colony. Ants colonies are also referenced as an example, how they sniff out pheromone trails and calculate the shortest distance to food supplies, avoid dangers, etc. The author explains that certain internet websites are now using this “hive-mind” logic to serve up news stories, for example, to their communities of readers, while the readers vote on stories they read pushing that content higher up on the popularity list - sort of a self reinforcing act of
“hive-intelligence”.

One central point the author makes is that these self-reinforcing hive-mind communities actually sway the opinions of their members by force feeding them the popular content that everyone else finds popular. An interesting example of a music downloading service is given to illustrate this finding.

What the author doesn’t write about, something I find very interesting, is that the search engines themselves, such as Google Yahoo! and MSN, all use this “hive-mind” intelligence to push popular website links to the top of their search engine listings. So there
are four things at work here:

1.) Popular websites are pushed to the top of search engine rankings positions (SERPs) via a “hive-mind” community (you and me and everyone else using the internet).

2.) People are swayed into finding/using/making those already popular websites at the top of the SERPs even more popular, (i.e. linking and referencing the content)

3.) Your opinion about what is popular is “formed” by what is popular at the top of the SERPs, because lets face it, you’re more likely to go with a first page listing than number 47 on page 5.

4.) As a result of the 3 above, your consumer spending and behavior is being quietly controlled: who to click on, where to go for information and ultimately where to spend your money.