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How propaganda shapes SEO theory

Posted by Michael Martinez on December 19, 2007 in Advanced SEO

People don’t stop to think before typing things onto the Web. This is a phenomenon I’ve seen many times through the years. After the endless flame wars that have plagued mailing lists, Web forums, news groups, and blogs you’d think the experienced Web surfing population would not only get a clue, but that they would become tired enough of the phenomenon to self-police it.

Generally speaking, propagandists can get away with just about anything they want to do on the Internet. Someone will always extend you enough credibility to support your false, misleading statements enough until someone else steps up to lend more support.

Propaganda is such a powerful mechanism that it has been used for millennia but it has been scientifically studied and categorized (starting with pioneering research by the Nazis and by the United States’ own Institute for Propaganda Analysis).

If you’re engaged in search engine optimization you’re practicing propaganda in one form or another. If you’re engaged in search engine management, you’re also practicing propaganda in one form or another. So the oingoing competition between SEOs and search engines for control over the search results is a battle between two camps of propagandists.

San Antonio Professor Aaron Delwiche has an interesting site about propaganda analysis. Drawing upon principles established by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Delwiche lists seven forms of propaganda: name-calling, glittering generalities, euphemisms, transfers, testimonial, plain folks, bandwagon, and fear.

Both SEOs and search engines employ all seven forms of propaganda rather extensively. Here are a few examples (divided into three categories):

Propaganda - Word Games

Name-calling - “Spammer”, “black hat”, “unethical SEO”, “crooks” — all of these expressions have been used to describe either the entire SEO industry or just select individuals and/or companies. The name-calling comes from all sections and I have often pointed out how it demonstrates a near-complete lack of professionalism among the name-callers (so I resort to name-calling, too).

In some cases, people can rob the propaganda of its power by adapting the bad names as badges of honor. “Black hat” is now almost a respected self-designation, although people still spurn “spammers”.

Name-calling is closely associated with “guilt by association” and though it is a good idea to read search engine Webmaster guidelines on a frequent basis so that you have a firm understanding of their ground rules for inclusion in their indexes, you should be reminding yourself every day that search engines don’t set or reflect the moral standards for our communities. They are no better or worse than the people whose sites they choose to include or exclude from their indexes.

Glittering generalities - What is an “authority site”? Ask a dozen SEOs and you’ll get a dozen answers. What is “best practices SEO”? What is “ethical SEO”? What is “good SEO”? What is “link flow”? Both search engines and SEOs slither through industry jargon on a daily basis and it usually boils down to meaningless double-speak.

In SEO Theory, “best practices SEO” boils down to whatever works. Period. End of definition.

In ethical SEO, “best practices SEO” boils down to whatever doesn’t put a Web site at risk of penalty.

In search engine speak, “best practices SEO” boils down to whatever doesn’t threaten the self-determined integrity of the search algorithm.

In other words, even though I myself often use the expression “best practices SEO” to reassure people 1st Query doesn’t put its client sites at risk, I’m speaking in a glittering generality.

However, just because someone speaks in a glittering generality doesn’t mean they are being a propagandist. It could only mean that the expression(s) being used have become clouded by multiple uses. That is where propagandists thrive. I could easily claim to follow “best practices SEO” — internally meaning I do whatever it takes to rank — while letting people believe I’m claiming to be an ethical SEO who won’t put client sites at risk.

How do you sort out the liars from everyone else when the liars don’t have to actually lie?

Search engine representatives have occasionally used these types of expressions ambiguously, although it might be argued that since they speak to a skeptical audience (the SEO community) their propaganda is less dangerous. And that’s a good point. Skepticism undermines the power of propaganda, but good propaganda builds trust through trustworthy messages in order to strengthen the credibility of the main message.

Euphemisms - We don’t speak about banned and penalized sites as much as we used to, but now we talk about “stripping pages of their ability to pass value”. That’s a penalty. The softening of language is a common retreat for for people who have come under strong criticism for specific actions.

Search engines will continue to penalize sites for all sorts of reasons but we may never be sure of whether they have penalized the sites or if the sites are just collateral damage. For example, being included in the Supplemental Results Index in Google is not necessarily a penalty. But that doesn’t mean Google cannot penalize a site by moving its pages into the Supplemental Results Index.

For their part SEOs often result to euphemisms to strip credibility and authority from people or concepts they don’t agree with. There is more than one way to optimize for search, but an opposing method may be downplayed through soft language that unobtrusively strips differing points of view of their perceived credibility and authority.

False Connections

Transfer - Think of this as an undisclosed or subtly disguised appeal to a higher authority. A symbolic reference to a larger authority (implying that the authority supports the propagandist’s point of view) may be included in a message. You’ll often see such references in forum debates and discussions, particularly coming from forum admins and moderators who insist that “such-and-such is the way it is” without actually providing any support for their claims because “the industry views it this way” or “that is the collective SEO wisdom”.

You may see Euphemism and Transfer used together to set someone’s point of view beyond the implied majority opinion. A search engine, for example, might suggest that most Webmasters don’t engage in nefarious or suspicious practices and that therefore whatever the search engine integrates into its algorithmic processes reflects the unspoken moral opinion of those well-behaved Webmasters.

The good guys are on our side.

The silent masses support us.

The community views it this way.

If you can boil someone’s point of view down to one of those three points, you’re probably looking at propaganda. It comes from both SEOs and search engines.

Testimonial - There are some Web marketers who specialize in producing satisfied customer testimonials in almost every communication. If they are not quoting a client then they are implying that they could produce those testimonials if anyone asks for them.

Satisfied customers are not necessarily qualified to be telling complete strangers whether your business can be trusted to execute its agreements as promised. Their satisfaction could mean you’re doing the job or it could mean you’ve really hoodwinked them.

Search engines whip out the testimonial card every time they cite visitor counts, query counts, market share, etc. “We must be good because people are using us!” Again, if those people are not trained to evaluate search engines objectively, their opinions (testimonials) on which search engines to use aren’t helpful — those opinions are just propaganda.

Special Appeals

Plain Folks - Any attempt to look just like the rest of us is a “Plain Folks Appeal”. Google doesn’t try to look like Michael Martinez, but Googlers point out that they have to search the Web, too. If Matt Cutts points out how much he likes a certain aspect of Ask’s service, he’s probably being honest. But he’s still making a “Plain Folks Appeal” and this type of propaganda may be considered the least harmless.

We use Plain Folks Appeal to build rapport and harmony with other people. I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing, but you’ll find that “birds of a feather flock together” in the SEO community. When SEOs and search engineers reach out to each other, they try to find common ground.

So where the Plain Folks Appeal becomes propaganda is when the message hides a deeper agenda that is not necessarily in line with what plain folks would really agree with. Spammers create Web sites just like the rest of us. They need to earn a living too. But they cram our blogs and forums with unwanted link drops, they pollute search results with crappy nonsense, and they generally don’t care whom they inconvenience as long as they think they can make a buck.

Search engines run very popular Web sites, they share information freely, and they genuinely try to help people. They also resort to name-calling, make outrageous and unsupportable statements, and sacrifice the quality of their search results in order to advance their personal agendas.

We can pick on everyone for playing the “Plain Folks Appeal” card a little too much in this industry.

Bandwagon - I love this type of propaganda. I grew up on it. I mean it was literally a part of my education when I was a teenager involved in a multi-level marketing, direct sales organization. “Hi! I’m Michael Martinez and I earned $1 million in SEO revenue this year. If I can do it, you can too!”

Hm. I suppose if I don’t disclose the fact that my company has a very experienced sales group with good industry connections then no one will be hurt because, heck, THEY might have good industry connections, too. The truth is that we get some business in part because of my name and activity on the Web, but most of our business comes the old-fashioned way: we EARN it.

SEOs roll out the bandwagon more often than search engines. Most often you’ll see a combination of Bandwagon, Plain Folks, and Testimonial propaganda pitching some make-money scheme. Everyone is signing up for the millionaire’s dream plan. Why not do it too?

I’ve always wondered why, if the guy is making so much money with all his Web sites, he needs to turn around and sell his secrets to the credulous public? When I was a kid reading full-page ads in the back of magazines and comic books that promised I would be a millionaire if I just sent in $10 or $20 for the book with the secret formula, I wondered what the catch was.

Now that I see these same full-page ads on the Web (except that the transaction looks a little different), I wonder how people can still be so gullible. If I had a method for making $1 million on the Web, there is no way in Hell that I would sell it. Not to anyone. Sure as Hell not for $100.

Fear - Google-bashers have been waiting for this one, I’m sure. Google excels at playing the Fear propaganda card. But so do SEOs. Every time someone asks a white hat forum operator if some black hat technique works, the white hat forum operator snickers and suggests that, sure, it may work for a WHILE.

There are some SEO tutorials available right now that are playing on people’s fears: fear of being excluded from Google, fear of losing business because they’re not using the correct semi-secret tactic, fear of seeing the wrong pages show up in search results.

Fear is a powerful tactic. There are always monsters to slay, enemies to defeat, and catastrophes to prepare for. We slam the Book of Fear into people’s faces every day. The most effective Fear mongers have a pretty solid formula for success. Professor Delwich sums it up this way:

In summary, there are four elements to a successful fear appeal: 1) a threat, 2) a specific recommendation about how the audience should behave, 3) audience perception that the recommendation will be effective in addressing the threat, and 4) audience perception that they are capable of performing the recommended behavior.

We use propaganda to promote ourselves, our techniques, and our services.

We use propaganda to devalue competitors, their techniques, and their services.

Search engines use propaganda to establish moral authority, to reassure a skeptical audience (or perhaps merely an audience with a skeptics section) that they have our best intentions at heart, and to show that they are doing the right thing.

Search engine optimization both benefits and suffers from the constant flow of words between opposing forces. The fact that search engines compete with each other ensures that we optimizers don’t face a united enemy. The fact that the SEO community can’t get along better than sleep-deprived three-year-olds also ensures that the search engines are not facing a united enemy.

So what led me down this interesting path of golden-colored roses? I was reading a technical paper which proposes that Web spam is a form of propaganda. The authors reveal their naivete and inexperience with Web spam through some of their erroneous history and defintions (the explanation of “link farms” was particularly amusing — even Wikipedia has a better explanation).

The researchers concluded that “a trustworthy site is unlikely to deliberately link to an untrustworthy site, or even to one that ‘associates’ itself with an untrustworthy one.” Hm. Well, I link to Google all the time — and I don’t trust the quality of the search results I find there, given how little attention they’ve been paying to relevance lately.

And what about paid links? The researchers also concluded that educational sites could be inherently trusted because “academicians are not in the business of pointing to commercial sites”. Do you mean they don’t sell paid links? We know for a fact that some .EDU domains have links which have been sold because those domains have been outed.

And you have to wonder exactly what this query tells us about the trustworthiness of academicians. Do these academic spam researchers ever bother to check their facts?

Sorry — I almost started railing against the cluelessness of our academic community when it comes to the World Wide Web. After all, these are the people to whom we entrust the education of our children. Mom, baseball, apple pie.

Yeah. Mom, baseball, apple pie.

I trust what I find on the Web. I trust what I find on the Web. I trust what I find on the Web….