Google Juice & Boosting Your Rank

Got "Google juice"? The web service Alexa allows you to check a website's traffic and rankings. And, in addition to being a fun tool to play around with it's another way to check the origin and credibility of the information that you see online.

Seeing site's rankings may also raise questions about how you can increase your website's rank in Google and other search engines. A recent article in the Washington Post gives a good description of how people go about boosting their website's ranking, or in the lingo of the day getting more "Google juice."

How do you get more "Google juice"? According to the article:

"a whole new industry has arisen around mining the Web for links and other page-tweaks that can help sites boost their Google rank and reel in more visitors.
This industry calls itself "search-engine optimization," though I think a better name would be "search-massage consultants."

The key to the 'search-massage' is to propogate links to your site. And, that's what folks in this industry do. Here's another snip from that article:

"Rand Fishkin, chief executive of a Seattle-based search consultancy called SEOMoz, said he focuses on getting editorial links for his clients, partly by creating feature articles that Web publishers will link to: "We call it link-baiting. The idea is to attract a lot of natural links."

It sounds like the Web's version of public relations, with consultants baiting webmasters much like PR firms pitch stories to reporters. "


I think this notion of 'Google juice,' and how it can be manipulated, is important for several reasons. One, it highlights that the order in which results are returned from a Google search are not a vetting process that tells you anything substantive about the results. And, I also think it highlights the need for the kind of critical thinking that I've been talking about in class and online, when we find information on the web. Think about the "juice" behind your next Google search.