SEO "Defined" in the Sunday Times

Aug 21, 2006 - 4:45 pm 5 by
Filed Under Search News

The Search Engine Optimization industry has long been ignored by the press, who often focus on more "established" forms of marketing. A few years ago, it was very difficult to find an article about SEO in any mainstream or even fringe media outlet. How things change. Recently, Danny Sullivan, among others, was covered in an article about SEO in USA Today (recap). Prior to that, there was an article about the demand for search marketing professionals in WSJ's Career Journal. And then there was the Sunday Times...

A thread at Search Engine Watch introduces the article from this weekend's Sunday Times, which as Rand points out is woefully full of errors. Some examples of non-factual statements made by the author:

There are two types of search engines — directories and web crawlers. Directories, such as Yahoo, have staff paid to consider every new website submitted before slotting them into categories or subsections. Web crawlers such as Google or Ask.com work by sending out software programs — called bots — that trawl the web for information relevant to a user’s key word search.
OK I guess Yahoo! doesn't have a crawler?
Blogs are very “search-engine friendly” because they are rich in key words, and contain a large amount of text.
This warranted its own paragraph...

There are plenty more questionable statements in the article. It is a shame that the Times did not run this by an actual SEO expert for editing...I know there's at least a couple over there!

Join the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Console Performance Report Annotations Rolling Out

Nov 17, 2025 - 6:58 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 14, 2025

Nov 14, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Movemeber Google Update, Opal AI Spam, Discover Spam Fix, Copilot Search, Google Image Ads & More

Nov 14, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Advertiser Suspension Improvements: Faster & More Accurate

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google: Don't Close Your Google Ads Account To Make LSAs Work

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Shopping With AI Mode Comparisons, Call Store, Track Price & Agentic Checkout

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:31 am
 
Previous Story: Avoiding Clicking Ads on Your own Site