Googlewashing
The Register has a nice article about how easily high-status blogging marketers and tools vendors can game Google (“Googlewashing”) to produce desired results.
Pew Research Center’s latest research says the number of Internet users who look at blogs is ” so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs.” They peg it at about four per cent. But we’re looking at a small sub-genre of blogdom, the tech blogs, and specifically, we’re looking at an ‘A list’ of that sub- sub-genre.
Which means that Google is being “gamed” – and the language perverted – by what in statistical terms in an extremely small fraction indeed.
The Reg draws an Orwellian conclusion. Google is being “poisoned”…
“Newspeak was one of the planks of the totalitarian regime. Big Brother was constantly redefining history and redefining words – he knew people respond to key words,” he says. “It’s interesting that they’ve identified that the only way to oppose the one superpower comes from the people, and sought to redefine that.”
…
It was poisoned by a very select number of ‘bloggers’. Possibly a dozen, but no more than 30, we’d guess.In this case a commons resource, this very potent and quite viral phrase, was created by millions of people. But it was poisoned by a very select number of ‘bloggers’. Possibly a dozen, but no more than 30, we’d guess.Who is poisoning the well?
The phrase “greenwash” will be familiar to many of you: it’s where a spot of judicious marketing paint is applied to something decidedly rotten, transforming it into something that looks as if it’s wholesome and radical new, but which is essentially unchanged.
This is the first Googlewash we’ve encountered.