The Rational Basis For Decision Making

Search conferences provide a great place for people to show that even the snarkiest professional relationships leave room for genuine friendship…or at least respect. Witness Aaron and Giovanna Wall chatting with Matt Cutts at the highly successful IM Charity event.

Anyone else out there seeing Google changing from 10 results per page to 7? This appears to be a UI experiment rather than a definite change. While only a few people have seen this tweak, it may be a sign of the biggest change to hit search engine results in years.

The idea of 10 organic results seemed sacred, surviving the launch of blended/universal and the integration of local/maps, One Box and Sitelinks, not to mention preserved across all the major and not so major engines. Google may have been preparing for this for some time with changes such as reducing the number of ad units in the right rail.

It will be very interesting to see how this change influences user behavior.  Will this increase the percentage of people who go to page 2?  Will it increase CTR for the 4-7th positions?  Will it increase the number of people who reformulate the query?

Implicit in this decision seems to be Google’s belief that the top seven results contain all that is relevant.  Hubris is the first step towards defeat.

The impact of SEO on politics has yet to be really felt, but Chris Bower from Open Left is following the Electronic Grass Roots strategy I wrote about a year ago with his Google Bombing John McCain initiative.

Using the best practices of repuation management, Chris has chosen articles from established media outlets and is attempting to drive links to these articles with targeted anchor text.  Since the articles are keyword rich, on target and focused, they are highly relevant to the phrases.  Since the anchor text Chris suggests are taken from the article titles, it is very difficult for the engines to differentiate between "legitimate, editorial endorsements" and the kind of manipulation.

The only red flag for the engines will be that most bloggers will go ahead and link to all nine articles from one location instead of taking the time to create individual posts to support each topic/position they are trying to Google Bomb.

For example, one social commentary blog posted all of the links from a single story, although the author did at least take the time to change up the anchor text and add some more commentary.

Here are nine positions by John McCain that shows his true political allegence.  He is not a Maverick or an Independent, he has sold his soul to the Neo-Con Right Wing to get the nomination.

(1) John McCain Filibusters Minimum Wage Hike accuses the Democrats of class warfare — While adding to the war on the poor.

(2) McCain The Hypocrite economic policy shaped by lobbyist, just like every other republican agenda item. Bought and sold by Corporate America

(3) Bush, McCain On Social Security : Shredding the safety net. John McCain doesn’t need Social Security - He has two government pensions and married an heiress. .

(4) McCain Defends Nafta : It makes it so much easier to get export jobs when you create a special tax free zone and give corporations refunds for sending your jobs over seas. John McCain is a man of the people — Who make over $250,000 a year.

(5) McCain On Irag : Keep Troops in Iraq for "A Hundred Years".

(6) McCain Supports Bush Veto : Deny kids health insurance expansion.

(7) McCain Opposes GI Benefits: : He already got a government funded college education, why should our troops expect the same.

(8) McCain Opposed Choice: He supports individual rights of corporations, but not women’s rights to control their own body.

(9) McCain Defends Bush’s Iraq Policy : The biggest disaster in 225 years of American Foreign Policy and John McCain, the man running on his experience, supports Bush’s Policies.

I was at the flex for the Campfire One event last night to mingle with the Blogarazzi, drink hot chocolate while being regaled with Guacamole recipes and tales of how Google’s new friend connect was going to allow anyone to add social features to their website with only rudimentary html experience. Google has jumped from gadgets to widget by leveraging all the work done to support their Open Social and Open Auth to make it easy for web-masters and web-apprentices to go social.

It’s not the quality of the widget that bothers me or even trade offs that webmasters make when they join a platform. I don’t mind that Google is leveraging open source to meet Facebook’s platform play. Facebook has lots of dough and lots of hubris.

I am bothered by the sudden lack of oxygen in the room as Google inhales whatever momentum social networking has left and makes sure that the next phase of social networking companies will suddenly need to be Google Centric. Microsoft used vaporware and some very predatory contracts to drive competitors out of business. Open Social, Google App Engine and now Friend Connect demonstrates that Google has perfected the art of co-opting everyone else’s efforts by offering them an infrastructure umbrella.

Google has absorbed the best ideas of the emerging social web for pennies on the dollar while making sure they have the inside track on monetization. They have done it with a team of hard working, dedicated engineers who want to make the web a better place. Unless you are a cynical search marketer or your start-up is suddenly having trouble breathing, you won’t even notice.