Does SEO Make the World A Better Place?

Slate.com seems to think so in this interesting article. They touch upon some of the old snake oil perspectives of SEO that need to stay in the past. Certainly there were/are people/firms that are not highly ethical, but SEO better or worse than a financial planner. Some really want to help, some just want your money.

Comments

[Andrea Hill]

I read the article, but I'm afraid I don't quite get it. Is the thought that ripoff report is doing SEO, and that's why it's ranked so highly? If the article stated that "Search Engines make the world a better place", I would heartily agree. However, optimizing for search engines? I didn't quite gather from the article why that was so important... as far as I understand. the pagerank algorithm at its core ranks sites based on their popularity in relation to the level of authority of their "linkees". I recently read something that said metatags and such are getting increasingly devalued as people can game them. So I don't understand how SEO (further than simply ensuring a site can be indexed) plays into it at all....

(unless my perception of SEO is misguided)