subject: Going Back to the Village - Internet Promotion [print this page] The lady on the phone insisted for the third time: "You will get a real good position and only for this price." After several calls, dozens of e-mails and talks she had with her manager for us, she offered her' reduction to me. All this service without being asked. She was selling positions' for a big search engine. For the good order: the positions are related to keywords, which people use when searching on the internet and which can be called the core' of the whole internet marketing.
"Well, let me see my position then" I said. Following the instructions given by her I typed in the keywords. And there I was. Having not been on this search engine for a long time, I was surprised.
Almost every part, every space of the result page was filled with links, banners, sponsored sites and hikis and fikis' or whatever it might be called. The results, for which a search engine is actually used for, looked like a land of borders: on the top, middle and bottom of the results were three sponsored links placed. I don't know why, but suddenly this chaos on the screen reminded me of the metropolitan suburbs of developing countries.
Only buildings next to each other; one higher or uglier than the other one. No matter if you have rented a room on the top, middle or on the first floor you easily get the feeling of suffocating only by watching. You would rather leave and never come back.
How come, I am having the same feeling now? How fast did this happen?
It was not long ago; maybe six or seven years, when the internet got integrated in daily life and I also started to use it. Without being disrupted I could go through to the tenth page of the results. While searching the feeling of being surprised by the expected results arose. It was like the results were your own, only yours. The cleanness of the pages surely supported such feelings.
Later, surfing on the internet diminished to five or six pages. And by now I do not surf more than two pages of the results. This is amazing! Although meanwhile the amount of sites that have been created by people and the data of search engines have been growing in high speed, people are now not going further than the second page. Why? Is it because the search engines give better results within the first two pages? Or is it because of the tiredness that afflicts you while searching? I suppose it is more the second option.
