Googlearchy? Maybe Not

I was listening to the BBC Digital Planet podcast this morning, and they discussed new research on "Googlearchy." For those unfamiliar with the term, the idea is that search engines, especially Google, may create a biased environment where popular sites get even more popular and obscure sites remain obscure, because the obscure sites are just not as popular on search engines. Much of this centers around PageRank, which is the way Google measures the importance of websites. PageRank is a measure of how many other websites link to a given page. You can see the PageRank of a website by using Google Toolbar.

However, according to reasearch done by Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, "Googlearchy" doesn't exist. This is good news for both web surfers and web designers.

Users can still readily find obscure pages, so long as they use the right search criteria, and less popular pages can increase in popularity, so long as they employ basic search engine optimization techniques.

• Surprising Search Patterns - MIT Technology Review
• Digital Planet - BBC News
• How to Search with Google Effectively
• How to Improve Your Website's Google Ranking
• Use Google Toolbar to Improve Your Website's Google Ranking