April 10th, 2010 by Susie

The problem of evil arose in philosophy because it seemed quite hard to account for the presence of evil in the world if God was good, knew everything and was uniquely powerful. Theologians may still debate this question, but the problem the search engine optimisation industry has with ‘evil’ is quite different. With its original desire not to ‘be evil’, Google brought ethics and search engines together. Terms like black hat and white hat also bring morality to the fore.

The problem with bringing morality into business is that it can lead to accusations of hypocrisy and inconsistency with astonishing rapidity. Moreover, there is never going to be a global consensus about what constitutes evil. Sometimes it seems that evil is simply in the eye of the beholder. While not harming others may be an exception to the rule of disagreement, it does seem that confusing commercial imperatives and moral absolutes is always likely to end in confusion.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that people feel so strongly about their own morality. Environmentalists, for example, may have the best of intentions, but they can be quite intense. Ethics in the corporate world should be about avoiding dishonest practices, but the sector of advertising is sufficient to illustrate that the demands of industry mean that the concept of honesty has to be stretched a little from time to time.

When it comes to search engine optimization, the terms black hat and white hat can shed more heat than light. It is easy to think of black hat techniques as being dark arts performed by individuals who verge on the criminal. Similarly, it is possible to imagine white hat techniques as the preserve of benevolent angelic figures. Too many articles and blogs on SEO neglect to mention the grey hat areas and fail to point out how techniques which were formerly white hat have been put in the stigmatised black hat category.

None of this is to advocate large scale link purchasing or keyword stuffing. It is simply to critique the use of words with moralistic overtones. The buying of links can be avoided by SEO services on pragmatic grounds, in order to avoid the sanctions of the major search engines. Keyword stuffing is a procedure which irritates users and even if it escapes a penalty may be poor for the long term prospects of a site. To describe it in ways which lend it negative connotations in terms of morals seems an unnecessary step.

The lack of clarity with regard to search engine rules is one of the fundamental causes of grey hat techniques. Impatient clients pressurise their SEO firms for quicker results, so it is unsurprising that some are tempted into this awkward area.

Evil is quite an old-fashioned word and it is arguably overused. Most people are a mixture of good and bad qualities, rather than one thing or the other. The world of search seems to be creating problems for itself by implying that the good and evil dichotomy can help to make sense of its varied commercial activities.

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