Are the activities of search engines a-moral? I would like to define the terms to cut out on the ambiguity. I mean devoid of morality when I speak of a-moral. It is like sitting on a chair. The mere act of sitting is not a moral issue. It is therefore a-moral. It becomes a moral issue if one goes on to say that the other is sitting on somebody else’s chair. It will be an endless discussion of whether it is right or wrong depending on the situation.
Are the activities of search engines devoid of morality? In all those algorithms which nobody really knows except perhaps for the search engines themselves, is there a moral issue concerned? If I pose the question, what criterion would pass the search engines to grant web sites high ranking? The relevance of keywords? Their density? How many times keywords were mentioned in the article? The number of characters? Should it have a thousand and more? Do search engines favor certain companies?
With all these questions posed, the search engine optimizers could only do so much. It is beyond guesswork. It is beyond technical work. Search engine optimizers may play the bad game to gain profit from the companies that hire them, but ultimately, they are called for something higher.
A good SEO do not set aside its high standard of morality. It may be a mission to get high ranking for the companies which hire them but it is a vision that in cyberspace, there is still the issue of what is right or wrong.
