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

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 12, 2025

May 12, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google

Google Tests AI Mode Button On Google Search Box

May 12, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Tests AI Overviews In Turkey, Sweden, Netherlands & More Prior To I/O

May 12, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Rare Google Ads Reporting Bug Led To Over Reported Click-Through Rates

May 12, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Tests Recipes With Interactive AI Overviews

May 12, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Search Discussions Beta May One Day Replace Reddit Results

May 12, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Avoiding Clicking Ads on Your own Site