Release Notes #4
Yesterday, I was thinking about search, both as a technology and a human activity, and how well Google (or any company with a search engine but primarily them) and SEOs explain it to the public and understand it themselves. How much do we engage with people who search? Do we know their pain points? Why they decide to go to Twitter to ask questions instead of a search engine? Why they might ask someone else to effectively search on their behalf? I know there are videos about “how search works” but is that how THEY see search or is that based more on field research? Do SEOs obfuscate search to retain authority and make profit out of people instead of educating them? Are we constantly following outdated practices because we don’t want to find out we’re behind and need to improve? Are we selling lies and feeding biases because “that’s how it’s always been done and it doesn’t harm me!“? Just some of the questions that revolve in my head that I have no time to resolve. And then I think about the mis/disinformation around search and how search engines work and instead of those companies looking inward, they go on the defensive. Who is that helping? I don’t expect a masked magician search engineer to start revealing pieces of various search algorithms, presented by Mitch Pileggi. But I’d prefer if the responses weren’t rude and snarky or sanitised to look like there aren’t biases behind the scenes when there are.