Wordnet describes “googly” as a cricket ball bowled as if to break one way that actually breaks in the opposite way. “Google” of course is a search engine that throws up googly’s when one searches for something! Puns apart, all search engines do that.

Why is that so?  Search engines are after all computer programs. You need to create databases and databases means records of something. So search engines create data bases of frequently searched words and match them with websites in which these words occur. They also create databases of links that connect  or from one site to another. When a user types a keyword, the database is searched and results are produced. When ranking sites access a website, they check the number of links to the site or from a site from the database and award the ranks. Hence, it is not surprising that a new world of commerce has grown around search engine optimization and link building!

But what about the googlies? I thought we were talking about search engine googlies! Yes we are. However, if you look deep into the issue you will find that it is not the search engines that make the googlies but the site owners who force search engines to produce the googles that visitors see! How?

Many site owners set out to improve page rankings for their site by ensuring that their sites are search engine optimized. Of course, they do not make a fetish of providing their visitors with information or knowledge in the process. They include the keywords in image descriptions, title of the page and scatter the keywords in sufficient percentage to ensure that search engines are hoodwinked into thinking that the site is relevant to the keyword. After all search is a computer program and the law of garbage in garbage out never changed since the introduction of the computer.

These site owners also love article directories. They will buy or create quantities of articles that are qualitatively poor but provide links back to their sites to make sure Alexa and other similar sites rank them high because of the number of incoming links to the site.  While this is cheating for links, how does it matter?

In the circumstances it is not surprising that “searchers” experience the “goglies” when they search for relevant information.  What is your experience? Do you get googlies when you google? Come share it with us!