I am not a Google fan. This is because I know what Google is supposed to be and it is not what it is supposed to be. I also know what page rank is supposed to be but Google's page rank does not add up to what it's supposed to be.

The problem: Everybody and their grandmother who wants a web page by now has a web page. If they've been at it for any length of time, they've learned to list their page with the search engines and if they've studied the process for even two minutes, they know what tags and keywords are. Sure, a lot of folks list key words that are only appropriate to their page in particular, but many (especially vague shoe-string internet home businesses) list a barrage of tags and keywords that don't remotely have anything to do with what they are offering.

I personally realized the process had gotten out of hand one day when I curiously typed my own name, hometown and school into Google, wondering if old school chums could find my web page through a Google search since that information is listed on my web page. It's a particularly specific web search and should immediately yield articles regarding people with names similar to my own, town names similar to my own and schools with the same name. The results were abysmal.

The top 50 listings, neither contained my Myspace page, nor anyone with the same name, etcetera. Even adding the state the school was in did not improve the situation. Most every page that came up during that search was some sort of business that couldn't logically gain business from that particular search, assuming that one of my old school chums would stop searching for me and click on a plumber's web page in Shreveport.

Other folks may be watching their page ranks on Google and gaining a sense of superiority if they gain a high rank for the keyword criteria they choose, but quite possibly those folks may have "padded" their keywords and tags to gain that status and, in a true real-time search those extra keywords and tags don't help them for true real-time rank.

It is sort of like cheating at school. Maybe they got away with it but in the big scheme of things it does not make a real hill of beans for practical use. I personally don't want to give my business to any doctors, lawyers or nurses who cheated their way through medical or law school and I really don't want to do business with a bricklayer in Boise who turns up on a search for elementary schools in Pennsylvania.

Maybe eventually smart librarian types will be able to convince the folks using their page ranks as status symbols to turn themselves in for inappropriate keyword and tag listing. Making fun of them on Saturday Night Live and other comedy shows might help a little. Who would have thought the dreamer's Utopian vision of the internet would include figuring out how to skim off that web scum that is overpadding of keyword tag listings on search engines?

Learn more about this author, Rebecca Phillips.
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