Maybe not, read about this new study. Excerpt:
While search engines do not make for a level playing field, their use partially mitigates the rich-get-richer nature of the Web, giving new sites an increased chance of being discovered, as long as they are about specific topics that match the interests of users. So it seems that cyberspace, for now, is more of a googlocracy than a googlearchy.
The *observed* googlecracy effect (i.e., the egalitarian effect, which says that unpopular webpages can be discovered nevertheless by web surfers) comes as a result of marketing efforts, in my humble and modest view.
Look. I created my prediction market vortal in December 2004. For many months, my website was ranked in the second tier by Google. Nobody ever discovered it by querying Google.
Today, my website is ranked #4 for the “prediction markets” phrase, and Google brought me 1,252 people last month. Why is that?
I’ve been nurturing relationships with some bloggers. When a blogger (e.g., economist Tyler Cowen) links to my website, there’s a transfert of Google PageRank from his/her website to mine, in a small way. After hundreds of inbound links, then my website has now a PageRank of 5/10, and that’s one of the reasons it ranks high now at Google.
Conclusion: the egalitarian effect comes from the webmasters and bloggers’ marketing efforts.
Read about this some time back- in the Economist (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=51654070).
Had a question for the real Economists among us- IS the analogy to a real
economy anything more than a metaphor?
matthew – hate to burst your bubble, but I think it’s pretty difficult to have a web page (that has been online for over a month or two) with a rank of less than 4 or so. I know my front pages are about that level, and have scant traffic.
7? I can only dream…
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