Tom Dalton :: Doer of Good

David Berkowitz, the director of planning at 360i, offers this tip for SEO:

"Anyone can declare themselves an expert and create links to their category. Http://google.com/coop (also in Beta) offers a powerful way to get web sites on top of the search results. When users subscribe, if they search in the topic, you’ll come up on top of the natural search rankings, even higher than Google base."

I've added the emphasis on the three crazy parts of that statement.

1. Anyone can declare themselves an expert -- and how credible is a system that allows for that? And create links to their category. Impartial, expert links, no doubt.

2. When users subscribe -- and why would they do that? As we learned in point number one, anyone can declare themselves an expert. In the Internet world, this means everyone will. Actual expertise notwithstanding. SEO-minded individuals will be even more likely to create many categories because they want the Adsense revenue that (in theory) follows. Finally, the only SEO value of Google Coop is when sites over-represent themselves in their search results.

3. If they search -- which turns on the same issue as point two. Google coop is a great idea in certain contexts. Random users searching on sites they've just run across, restricting their results to whatever that site deems worthy, is not one of those contexts.

I'm excited for Google Coop, because I've always wanted to be able to restrict a search to a set of sites that I've bookmarked previously. But to restrict my search to a set of sites that somebody else bookmarked previously?

There aren't that many experts. And to espouse this as a tactic for SEO wannabes just means the proportion of experts using this tool will be even smaller. And the value of the tool even less.

So, contact me for expert knitting advice. Or mesothelioma. I've got some great search sites for you!