boo-blog

The nearest mankind has got to an oracle these days are the search engines. They know everything, they answer everything, and if they don’t, it is because the question was not properly formed. Thanks to this unheard of capability, a lot of people use search engines as their start point (pt-pt); therefore, the bulk of internet traffic comes from them. The greatest generator of traffic to blogs, are for instance, search engines.

There is a whole economy that was created around content search engines, and a lot of second-generation Brazilian web startups are dependent on them to create revenue streams. A classic example occurs when content index services from other websites create optimized pages for searches; place ads around the content; and wait for traffic to come from search engines, when the so called “keyword droppers” are going to click unwittingly at ads, generating revenues.

The problem with this business model is that if the search engines change any parameter in its relevance algorithm, the traffic to the service can be severely affected, and the startup can agonize to death. As any beginner knows, it is dangerous to build a business that relies on a company that is not yours.

If you have an online business, imagine the following hypothetical situation: the greatest search engine in the world has disappeared, with no explanation, no warning. What would happen to your business? Would it get a little shaky before getting back on track or it would head straight for the badly-executed-good-ideas pile?

In our philosophy content is king. Fugita once said that search engines are the Web’s foundation stones (pt-br), and we agree with him. Search engines are n’t going anywhere for quite while, but they can change the way content is indexed or their relevance algorithms; harming companies that have as their single business model place advertisement around content selected from the web. The only certainty we have is that search engines are going to privilege good content, therefore, once more, whoever makes good, original and relevant content wins.

My company does not rely on search engines. If the greatest search engine ceased to exist boo-box would still be in business, and furthmore, we would feel almost no impact in our number of boo-boxes opened every month. We rely on good content, and that has been around since someone decided to paint a hunting party on a cave wall.