Our speaker Lonnie Hodge was the guest of weblogger Thomas Crampton and sings high praise of China's search engine Baidu. Baidu makes money by selling its search results and asks brand names a million RMB (€100,000) to get associated with those results.
It is naive to think that Google’s results are not for sale?Lonnie Hodge is a speaker at Chinabiz Speakers. If you would like him as a speaker, please drop me a line.
Google may not be directly involved in the sale of their results, but Hodge pointed out that there is a reason people pay top dollar to search engine specialists. These specialists work for the wealthiest and savviest companies to skew results. “The average SEO specialist in the US with 5 to 7 years of campaign management can command US$100,000 to US$250,000 for his/her talents. That certainly indicates an uneven playing field exists and that the results are dubious at best.”
But the question remains: Are purchased search results unethical?
Hodge praised Baidu for only selling the top four results and putting a line under them and only allowing brands and government agencies to buy their own search results page.
Update: Meanwhile I have joined the China Speakers Bureau as a principal partner. You will find our celebrity speakers now at their new home.
1 comment:
Call me naive then...
I think hiring SEO specialists to help you rank high in Google's search results is akin to hiring top mechanics who will tune your car, and help you win a race.
Baidu on the other hand, has sold the first place trophy outright for those who have the cash.
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