A story emerges on the Internet 4
th May 2012 ……….
“Today internet workers protested outside Google Mumbai. Google’s recent algorithm change (called Penguin) has created widespread unemployment in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Matt Cutts (head of Google webspam team) is expected to address the angry crowds tomorrow via video link from Google HQ.”
Did this actually happen? or is this one of the many Internet inventions / fallacies/ made up stories / memes / rumours that spread through the Internet? Researching for this article I came across one basic Internet article that has been spun over and over again for obvious SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, either by humans or through article spinning software (look for incredibly bad grammar and the tortuous use of a thesaurus). This spinning makes the story of this article even more interesting, due to the fact that the story is about….. The spinning of Web articles! (The re-writing of Web articles for the sake of increasing the search rankings of websites). The thousands of in Indian workers who make a living from the spinning of Web articles who are now loosing their jobs. Google, trying to clamp down on this way of fooling it’s search engine. Plus, an update to Google's search engine software that brought about the change, (this is where the Penguin comes in) called the Penguin Update.
For those of you who are not SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aficionados , let me explain. One way that an SEO firm can increase the rankings of a website, is to write an article on a blog and have links from that blog go to a website that they want to promote up the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This method of SEO is called link building and has been one of the main stay activities of SEO firms for the last 15years. An easy way to do this is to take an existing, original article, rewrite it and put it on your own blog or website. You then point the web links from the Web article to the Web sites that you want to promote. These re-writes don’t necessarily have to be good, as often no humans are going to read them, they only need to be there in order to be scanned by Search Engines such as Google. These Web articles mustn’t be exact copies of another Web article, otherwise the Google indexing robot would spot them and demote their relevance and authority. However, if they are rewritten, then they will escape this test and reproduce the link juice that is craved by the Marketing and Advertising Industry to promote Web sites up the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) . Internet Marketing and Advertising Firms from the USA and UK in particular have been outsourcing these Link Building activities to India, because, as with so many industries, this reduces their costs. Now we have a situation where 80% of this Link Building has been outsourced to India.
Here are links to this article's appearance and reappearance on the Internet. The article emerged in early May 2012.
First let’s start with the photo …….. supposedly sourced from Reuters…….
Is this photo genuine? Or is it a photo shop of another riot? with pictures of Matt Cutts (head of Google webspam team) from Google being put electronically onto the the placards being held aloft. To me those placards look fake, as they are all exactly the same. One would think that a really angry mob would have a variety of placards. Let’s face it they’re supposed to be angry, not coordinated! I also could not find the photo or the story on Reuters.
Now here are the links showing how the story emerged on the internet … this is by no means an exhaustive list of links …… and I have no axe to grind with any of the sites I’ve linked too …. I'm just showing how the story emerged, how it spread, and how it was interpreted.
4th May 2012
6th May 2012 … but the story proceeds
love the use of ‘Miss Conceptions’ on this one …… does this describe an overly fertile but currently unmarried single Mother?
9th May 2012 ….. the story rumbles on
22nd May…. Less sympathetic … but still going with the story ….
You shouldn’t have trusted those Indians ….
25th May 2012 ….
If you have the time to search the theme on Google, you will see the story, or variations of the story, appearing again and again.
Technological change often brings about social disruption. The Luddites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite protested against the changes to textile production brought about by the mill owners in early 19
th century industrial Britain. Whereas the Luddites were protesting against the industrialization of textile processes, in India, link building workers are protesting against changes by Google that make their work redundant. The irony is that both the sets of workers are called Spinners, the modern ones spinning web content and the older ones spinning wool.
Modern day Google and 19th century mill owners seem very similar in this scenario. Both modernising their processes, to make them better and cheaper for their customers, but completely ignoring, or not wishing to fully be responsible for the consequences of their actions. So much for ‘Don’t do evil’. However, to Googles credit they offered to help the workers develop new skills and practices that are more in keeping with Google’s new search algorithms. Matt Cutts the head of Google’s Webspam team talked to the angry workers via video link , trying to calm the angry crowds by pointing them in the direction of new techniques that they could use, but apparently this did not placate the angry mob.
Addressing an angry mob via a video link has to be a bit cowardly in my opinion, at least in 19th century Britain the mill owners would appear live, as it were, standing in front of their massive factories, top hat, sideburns and cigar in mouth,remonstrating face to face with the irate Luddites.
But wait ……….. surely this story is not true …. It has just been made up and spun into existence … It is an Internet myth………
I believe that at the base of any myth, as part of the myths DNA as it were, is an archetypal truth. This is why the Greek myths have lasted so long and have been retold over and over again. This is an invented story, but the difference between a myth and a good story is indefinable, like the thin line that separates genius and madness.
So what is at the core of this little, Internet, proto myth? At the centre of this Internet myth is the archetypal truth of how industrial change has catastrophic effects upon people. It shines a light on how reliant we all are on technology for our survival. It shows how our lives can change so frighteningly fast. It was more simple in the past, we grew food, we eat food, we hunted, we gathered. We built shelters and lit fires, we kept warm and out of the rain. With the onset of the Industrial revolution, in the 17th century, we became more prosperous, but simultaneously, became totally reliant on the technology and the factory jobs that provided us with money, so that we could ‘Buy’ our food and shelter. The industrialists and entrepreneurs that ran those factories had to respond to their competitors, who would constantly be coming up with innovations and inventions that would threaten to backrupt them if not copied or bettered. So, we have all become caught up on in an industrial ‘Arms race’ of constant and worrying change. At the centre of this Internet myth of the Penguin Riots of 2012, is the fear of technological change and how it affects us all.
BY SEO STEER
