What if search engines were open?
by Craig Raw
I'm not talking here about open source - releasing all that IP to the public domain is highly unlikely to ever happen. Search engine companies are some of the most closed mouthed of the lot, and it's only now that we are seeing some relaxation.
Consider however, a scenario where a search engine provides you with a detailed scoring on how it sees your site. Sort of a PageRank on a different order of magnitude. Link visibility, spam tendencies, most linked to pages - all is clear and reported to all interested parties. The website owners can act on this information to improve their standing with the engines, and the engines can adjust their scoring to favour better sites. The feedback loop creates a better mousetrap.
Of course, one of the first natural problems to arise is that some will attempt to use this information to outsmart the engines. I do not think this will last long however - the search industry is already mature enough to brush off most such attempts, and will react even more quickly to close the gaps as the feedback loop becomes better defined.
It is this feedback loop that drives innovation and progress. It is cited as the major reason open source software works. It is an indispensable feature of modern engineering. The question in my mind is - which search giant will be first to take advantage?
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