| As every market, the web market is ruled by supply | | | | to appear in the top 10 list of a search, very much |
| and demand. The major product in demand & supply, is | | | | affects its chance of being visited by a user looking |
| information.A huge number of web sites compete in | | | | for a specific information. A page's Google Pagerank |
| attracting the web user's attention, by offering | | | | is like a maturity and acceptance ranking, which |
| information or service content of high interest. | | | | affects substantially its ability to appear ahead of other |
| In the book 'Economics of Attention', by Lanham the | | | | pages in search results.As soon as a portal manages |
| following is mentioned: the most successful artists and | | | | to attract a User, the aim is to keep him on the site as |
| companies are the ones that grab attention and shape | | | | long as possible in order to maximize the user |
| it, in other words, that exercise influence. With so much | | | | exposure to the material advertised. Therefore info is |
| information, simply paying attention is the equivalent of | | | | frequently presented in small chunks and cannot be |
| consuming a meal'.It is like a continuous voting process | | | | downloaded in one piece.The more specialized the |
| in which millions of Internet Users vote on the sites | | | | content they present, the more specific the target |
| which host the most valuable content according to | | | | group they aim at. The ability to tackle a specialized |
| their individual interests. The results appear on the most | | | | subject (e.g. food recipes) can attract advertisement |
| visited web sites. Moreover web sites 'vote' each | | | | from market players on this area (food & beverage |
| other by referencing and linking their content to the | | | | providers).New market makers appear (offering |
| content of another site. This voting process is very | | | | search engine optimization services, automated |
| much influencing the search & ranking process of | | | | software for domain submission to numerous search |
| content, by major search portals. A content that is | | | | engines, search marketers, web affiliate programs |
| 'voted' by other sites of high quality, is considered of | | | | promoters, mail marketing etc), which offer to increase |
| high quality (also called high link popularity). Some sites | | | | the revenue potential of a web site. Sometimes the |
| have tried to develop artificially high link popularity, in | | | | extreme use of such services may lead to the |
| order to receive high search engine rankings. This is | | | | opposite result. There is no substitute for quality |
| part of what is called web spam, a problem of | | | | content.On the other hand, the on-line search industry's |
| increasing severity to the search engines.The higher | | | | Big Three are trying to fight search engine spam: the |
| the demand for this content, the more visitors are | | | | effort by some sites to fool search engines on their |
| attracted. The more visitors & clicks, the more | | | | content and link popularity and lure the search engine |
| attractive the site becomes for those interested to | | | | users into visiting their sites. The Big Three are |
| advertise relevant to the content products & services. | | | | spending billions to supply higher quality search results. |
| Because advertisement revenue becomes an | | | | Google's BigDaddy project aims to refine the way |
| increasing part of the revenue structure of many | | | | web pages are crawled, in order to reduce web |
| portals.This rivalry becomes more and more intense, | | | | spam.The ability to reserve a catchy & concise |
| as information floods the Internet (infoglut). The | | | | domain name, is also gradually decreasing.Moreover |
| identification of valuable information to the user and the | | | | companies apply brand management techniques on |
| 'relevance ranking' is almost impossible to be done | | | | the web in order to manage their web reputation.Mr. |
| manually, even if the user spends a lot of time | | | | Panayotakis has more than 13 years of professional |
| reviewing material. | | | | experience in information management. He holds a |
| This is why the role of the Big 3 search engines has | | | | Diploma in Electrical Engineering, an M.Sc. in Computer |
| become so central on the Internet. The ability of a site | | | | Engineering and an MBA. |