The Irony of SEO and the Death of Osama bin Laden

Written by Alan Monday, 2 May 2011 05:19

As I perused my usual news feeds in Google Reader today I noticed an overwhelming trend – Osama bin Laden.  You may think that’s not unusual given it’s pretty much the only thing in the news today.  Maybe, but my RSS feed is filled with tech sites, hundreds of them.  Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.  There’s not a tech angle of any kind to the news of a Navy SEAL team coming out of nowhere and storming bin Laden’s compound.  Sure, there were probably some high-tech gadgets being used, but we haven’t yet heard about those, and many of them we will likely NEVER hear about.

So why were tech sites everywhere writing article about this news?  Simple – SEO.  Sure, they all worked hard to disguise their stories with some technology of some sort – like a Google Earth photo of the compound.  But, the bottom line is that web sites live by getting page views and big news stories generate those eyeballs.  Even major sites like Yahoo got in on the game by writing a blog post about the top bin Laden searches they were seeing and what they mean.

The biggest irony of all is that by writing this I am falling into the same trap as the sites I am talking about.  Of course, this site needs readers to survive as well so I guess I just brought this little irony full-circle

Alan

Alan is the owner and editor of Making Windows Easy. In addition to writing about technology he is also an avid distance runner and hiker. Read More

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