Social networks are building up more and more substance to the point where everyone, even the giants of the web such as Google are having to take note. Search engines are changing their algorithms to incorporate the influence of social networks. They are giving the networks more power to define the search engine rankings.

It has been argued for a long time that many of the search engines were too easily fooled and that they lacked the ability to truly identify website worth looking at. This is no longer the case, with search engine variable being in the hundreds, there is very little room to get away with cutting corners. However now with the help of millions of users’, daily, search engines are starting to become even less susceptible to manipulation.

Now its not just the maths

Search engine optimisation is on everyone’s lips, and so it should be. They are the rules of the game by which anyone using the internet are a part of weather they like it or not. Without search engines we would all be lost, however without following the set criteria for search engines your website is lost anyway. The way in which search engine distinguish one site from another with a keyword search is by using their very complicated very intricate algorithms. In the past there have been ways to momentarily confuse of trick this engines into ranking sites highly that should not be. These incidents do not have a long life span as they are usually found out and the loop holes shut.

With the inclusion of social networks into these very complicated algorithms, the power of rankings is inadvertently returning into the hands of the users. Many of these social networks work by providing a space in which users list, rate, rank and share their favourite, interesting and useful sites. Thereby allowing others in that said social network to search within that network for a sites that have been viewed and judged by another user. This in turn negates many of the black hat methods used to trick computers. The search engines are now using the listed websites on these social networks to provide the search engine users even more accurate, and inevitably more useful results for their key word searches.

Making the web better, one site at a time.

This has effected search engine optimisation because in the past many sites were designed with the search engines in mind, but now companies have to make better websites for the user as apposed to the search engines. This is a great move in the right directions, as website should not be designed to get as many hits as possible, they need to be designed to attract users and give then what they are looking for, link them to user additional sites and get them to come back again. It’s a lot more to live up to as a web designer, but it serves to make a more useful internet.

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