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As SEO is blamed, so one could also blame the existance of search engines themselves. What this really has to do with is "meeting consumer demand." It just hap
by AJ007 14y ago
As SEO is blamed, so one could also blame the existance of search engines themselves. What this really has to do with is "meeting consumer demand."
It just happens, not by coincidence, that there is a lot less competition in areas where the end product doesn't actually exist.
Last month I tried to reverse look up a phone number with Intelius. They tried to upsell me a bunch of monthly subscriptions, and then told me the phone number wasn't actually in their system but they would look for it. I was to expect an answer in 3 days. 9 days later they said they couldn't find it and refunded my charge.
Intelius knew they wouldn't be able to have that number. But, they knew there was an X% chance I'd sign up for their monthly recurring service; something I suspect would not have been refunded.
There are plenty of other businesses making money selling things that don't exist. Some are arguably legitimate, such as Kickstarter. Others, such as pyramid schemes, are quite less so.
- mattwdelong 14y agoIn my opinion, you're not entirely wrong nor are you right. For one, I don't think that ranking for 2015 BMW 3 Series (my former example) is meeting any demand. The car does not even exist yet; I'm not even sure if BMW would even be working on it at the moment. How can that be meeting demand? The example you gave with intelius is not entirely wrong persay; as they did "try" to perform a valuable service in the end. However, what if a random nefarious individual started ranking for non-existant phone numbers, took your money, and ran? Gamification of SEO is a slippery slope. Sometimes it's useful and other times it goes horribly wrong. It comes down human intentions and search engine sorting out the good vs the bad, I guess. I have not yet known a machine to determine human intention.
- rhizome 14y agoIt doesn't really matter whether intent can be divined, because perverse incentives can be engineered out of the system if the resources and will are present. Did Intelius "try," or did they get free 9 day loan?