SEO and what it does to the web : inherently evil?

Sameer

http://web.appstorm.net/general/opinion/seo-is-breaking-the-web-heres-how/

I've held for a long time thats its a fundamental problem that we're all trying to create sites and content for the benefit and pleasure of a tool thats supposed to discover and find it, and rank it naturally. The tail wagging the dog, if there ever was one.

Sagar

Double edged sword IMO.

Search at the scale of the web is hard to say the least. Content ranking is far better than the latest zingbang that Google does with incorporating browsing habits into its search - which is utterly stupid ... primary function of search is to serve as a handle for stuff that I'm trying to find for the first time and using history to bias that seems illogical even for ze mighty Google - and I guess there are enough filtering techniques to figure out, at least on a rudimentary level, if the website is genuine content or just token repetition for the sake of a high rank.

Yes, SEO being shoved down people's throat is what is creating the problem. The view has suddenly become more important than the model because there's no way to know what the controller (i.e. Google) is upto!

sinha

Industries like travel and classifieds are an example of how SEO has killed the niche content business.
The bigger challenge is that even after so many talks of social vs search , nothing much has changed. Social has become more cluttered with noise, while search has become a lot noisier.
And we do not have a 'Google killer' yet (though I think Google itself is hell bent on killing Google, but that's a diff story).

NrupalDas

Indeed it is inherently evil, when one should be spending time on improving ones product time is being spent on building links from websites one way or the other.

When searches are gateways to other website, it seems difficult to avoid working in the direction which would get you noticed via searches.

Sometimes you dont get rewarded for doing your job properly (relentlessly working on your websites) while someone working on other website (link building) steals the show. It's tough to ignore and its tough to do that when you dont want to do that.

The echo system built around SEO is eating up genuine websites and forcing them to it this as well.

As @sinha rightly pointed out "Google Killer" is eagerly awaited but as the "search algo bosses" claim coming up with an algo which can be shared but still not tampered is myth awaiting reality. Sometimes I wonder the lack of clarity of SEO efforts leads to needless spams of links everywhere with a sole motive to rank higher in Google.

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