Again, it’s important to emphasize that a.) Google understands better than anyone how important its search product is, strategically, to its business, and b.) Google employs a massive number of brilliant, dedicated, customer-obsessed employees that are focused on upholding and improving the quality of its search engine.

And yet, again, it’s difficul

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People ask questions on Google. "How do I make a dirty martini?", "What is the best electric car?", "Should I get vaccinated?". Google prioritizes links that answer these questions against a set of well developed rules. Those that rank typically do better serving the user. This too is The Algorithm. Hewing to the Google machine is called Search Eng... See more

That meant there were three strategies available to media companies looking to survive on the Internet. First, cater to Google. This meant a heavy emphasis on both speed and SEO, and an investment in anticipating and creating content to answer consumer questions. Or you could cater to Facebook, which meant a heavy emphasis on click-bait and human i... See more