Authorities, Language, Emotional Connection, and Relational Databases

Why does Google sponsor spam and tell people to blend their AdSense ads, but try to control other link sales? It is the frame of thinking which allows them to make the most money (don't spam unless you do it with us and give us insider information on your business). If you are afraid of the consequences then you become risk adverse. But you are rarely going to do anything great if you let fear control your actions. It is an epiphany the day you realize that you created enough value that the search engines need you more than you need them. Why does the media like to paint a wall between editorial and content when there is none? Many movies are profitable only because product placement revenues. And many toll booths have ads on them. Think about the toll booths...there only to collect money and slow you down AND they still have ads on them.

Why is Matt Mullenweg so afraid of spam after he stepped his game up a level above anything I would consider doing? Because he feels he has to be for his credibility, especially after botching it up badly in the past.

As a recruiting technique the US government holds pizza parties with 13 year old children, getting them to play video games where the content is about killing people.

"We want kids to come into the Army and feel like they've already been there," said Col. Casey Wardynski, who as director of the Army's office of economic and manpower analysis came up with the idea. "A game is like a team effort, and the Army is very much a team effort. By playing an online, multiplayer game, you can get the feel of being in the Army." - The Washington Post

Yet politicians talk about protecting the children online. Do you notice a moral disconnect here?

If you look at a tag cloud of presidential speeches you won't just find issues that the population find important. You will find some of them scattered in to make the rest of the sales pitch sound legitimate, but you will also find ample amounts of bogus Orwellian language like death tax.

There is no need to repeat what is actually true and believed. Power sources only repeat things because

  • they are untrue or misrepresented

  • they set a frame of thinking to the benefit of the speaker
  • they pull focus from other issues

Why do authority sources hate the idea of openly selling authority? Because if they openly endorsed it then they might not be able to do it themselves, and people openly and honestly selling influence create more value in richer conversations.

Value systems only exist in our minds. The value of asking for feedback is not just in the chance that people give you a better idea, but also their experience and bonding with the idea which turns the feedback giver into a person who is emotionally connected to your brand... which is especially true if you listen to their feedback. The very ability to influence Digg and Wikipedia directly are what make their brands so powerful.

When language is a commodity that is targeted, bought, sold, and repositioned against ever-shifting arbitrary quality guidelines what could be more valuable than asking influential people what words / tags / ideas they relate you to and how you could do a better job of it?

Published: November 18, 2006 by Aaron Wall in marketing

Comments

November 19, 2006 - 9:42am

Spamming Google can be fun but the treadmill gets rather old. As one who's done it for over a year now, some of those white hat projects I dumped long ago are starting to get a bit more interesting :)

G-Man

sufyan
November 19, 2006 - 9:49am

As far as I think, G has one option to choose from the two available. Either reverse out “DO NO EVIL” or continue sponsoring and telling publishers to blend their Adsense ads and blah blah! The current move that contradicts their own motto isn't going to work for a long time. Or will it? I am quite unsure! LOL...

November 19, 2006 - 8:21pm

Google's "ever-shifting arbitrary quality guidelines" definitely keep shifting... but aren't exactly arbitrary (at least to them). They're readjusting to get a bigger slice of the pie... there's just too much opportunity to make easy money and hell, they own the reason why.

This idea of selling language is interesting. Had someone post recently saying there are about 200k words Oxford dictionary recognizes. Endless combinations (phrases) of these words. So Google... do you want to organize the world's info, or organize a monetization structure around the world's languages?

Thought of this way the model is simply genius. Position yourself as the world's info retrieval tool. Position a market structure around info retrieval and language. Makes me long for non-commercial search engines.

seopractices
November 20, 2006 - 5:32pm

Is all about business, GOOGLE isn't trying to make Internet a "better resource for information." So yeah, you can SPAM, you just have to know how to do it "PROPERLY".

brian b
November 19, 2006 - 5:12am

Hey Aaron, thanks for talking at PubCon this week.

I find it interesting that Google publicly promotes white hat seo and discourages black hat. Yet, there are numerous reports of spam sites that stay at the top of google rankings. Don't bite the hand that feeds you!

November 19, 2006 - 7:26am

Google loves spam that sells adsense. Exactly why I wrote this search engine ode;
Search engine, search Engine fell on your head,
Search engine,search Engine soon you'll be dead.
All of the bad serps from spammin' and such,
Search engine, search Engine when is enough?
Search engine, search Engine why all the ads?
Search engine, search Engine your time is in fads.

November 19, 2006 - 7:42am

Yes people in authority should have a positive attitude towards most of the things like Col. Casey Wardynski.
Certainly if you have a vision your words and actions should always nurture it. Good deeds done in present will certainly bear fruits in future.

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