Weekly Task V: Search Engine Optimization and Ethics

What is the SEO?
SEO is a set of methods that will contribute to a higher ranking in search engines. To better fit the ranking algorithms of search engines in the existing site and web pages, some changes are made. For this purpose, additional domains and special pages (doorway pages) are created.

Methods of SEO: White hats
Optimizers accept certain methods and reject others. Accepted by them are called the "civilized" or white hats and not accepted are considered as "uncivilized" or black hats. For example, according to the civilized methods, only the original pages of the site must be optimized for search engines. Also, the constant addition of pages to the relevant theme of the site content, regular updates, adding incoming links, which is tied to the keyword anchor text links, and regular updating of the header tags, these methods will belong to this group. In addition to these standard procedures, there is also the addition of the components of blogs that reinforce the role of the site and enhance its status and attract attention to writing the text for the pages that host certain keywords. 

Methods of SEO: Black hats
Black hat SEO practices attempt to improve a web page’s search engine ranking through SEO methods that are prohibited by search engines or in violation of their Terms of Service.
Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• breaks search engine rules and regulations
• creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site
• unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.

Typical Black Hats SEO methods:

• Keyword stuffing: Packing long lists of keywords and nothing else onto your site will get you penalized eventually by search engines.
• Invisible text: This is putting lists of keywords in white text on a white background in hopes of attracting more search engine spiders. Again, not a good way to attract searchers or search engine crawlers.
• Doorway Pages: A doorway page is basically a “fake” page that the user will never see. It is purely for search engine spiders, and attempts to trick them into indexing the site higher.
• Cloaking: Cloaking describes the technique of providing a different page to search engine spiders than what a human visitor is shown. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms of Service of most search engines and results in banning of the website.
• Automated Link Software:  Automated SEO software that act as link machines are heavily looked down upon by Google and all other search engines. The entire reason why search engines rely on links to gauge site popularity is because links are supposed to be analogous to third-party votes. But when you use automated software to create these links, you’re basically hiring an army of robots to vote for you again and again.

Moreover, there is a large Black Hat SEO community forum, where practically anyone can easily find answers to his questions, useful tips and advices.



Ethics of the SEO
As a professional of search engine optimization is dealing with at least two clients, in fact there is more than one ethical rule. Firstly, there is ethics in relation to the client - owner of the website. Secondly, and this applies to the most part of the question, ethics has to deal with another client - search engines. Because the needs and demands of these two clients are often diametrically opposite to each other, search engine optimization is often a dilemma.
Search engine optimizer is responsible to the owner of the website and trying to achieve the best possible places in the results page in search engines. It is also necessary to follow the guidelines for webmasters that provide search engines, as these recommendations are a necessary condition of the optimization. It is a very important fact, where exactly a professional search engine optimizer draws the line between the website and search engines, as well as the manner in which the need for those limits is explained to the website owner.
It is also very important and serious discussion about the real goals of the owner of the website and on what level of risk wish to be the site owner to getting penalties from the search engines or complete ban of his site. Not every professional search engine optimizer will go as far, as the webmaster who wants to go out on the territory of the gray and black hats. Different experts have different interpretations of where the boundary between what is written in the recommendations of search engines and what wants to change the owner of the website.

Weekly Task IV: Privacy Policies of Web Site

A privacy policies of the web site state how you will respect the privacy of your website users. It says what information you will gather, how you will use it and how you will keep it secure.


Report the companies/services you selected as your examples

Our group decided to choose Facebook and Apple. Facebook is the most populated, one of the most popular web sites in the world, while the Apple is the most successful corporation in the world. Both companies are very interesting in the privacy policies case and they both have influenced the world a lot.

What kind of information privacy policies they typically have?
– Facebook
The user is allowed to decide which information about him he would like to be confidential and be hidden from others. Some applications may use additional information, like location, ip-address/web browser version, but they usually ask for user's permission in order to do this. Moreover, web sites with implemented facebook social plugin (comments, etc.) also collect the same information about users. The collected data may be used in various services, like suggestions, advertisements and offers. In order to protect children from some adults, restrictions are used. Also, name, various user's networks and profile picture are always publicity available.

– Apple
Each user has to create an account in order to use most of the Apple's services on the devices. This account is called 'Apple ID'. It is used to authorize your computers, gadgets like iPhone/iPod, allow changes on Macs, purchase applications in AppStores (both on OS X and in iTunes), iCloud and Find My iPhone service and for lots of other purposes.
To create an account each user has to input such personal information, as name, location, phone numbers, e-mail (which will become the Apple ID login), credit card/Pay Pal account information. This information is secured, however, lots of accidents with hacking Apple ID's have appeared recently and the most annoying thing for users about this is that, unfortunately, Apple pays no attention to this problem.
Some additional data may be collected from Apple's devices as well, like location and statistics of usage.

Do you find some differences between the policies of the two companies you selected?

– Facebook
   Once a platform for college peers to connect, has recently become a global enterprise selling user information to third parties. Facebook scans user profile information and shares it with third parties and advertisers to deliever a 'personalized' advertisements on the user's homepage. In order to use any facebook application, the user must agree to the terms of use, which include access to their personal information.

– Apple
   Apple, the once small, start-up tech company is a distant memory to the global conglomerate that Apple now is. Much like Facebook and Google, it is also all too willing to share private user data to the highest bidder. Apple has used the data it has collected from iPhone, iPad and iTunes users and sold it to "partners and licensees". Users must agree to this or they can not download from the iTunes store.

So, privacy policies of these companies are pretty much the same, but there exists one difference. These companies have in their privacy policies one division “Collection and Use of Personal Information” and here it is. Apple collects information using iPads, iPods and iPhones. As users of iPad and iPhone, we perfectly know that before first start of Apple devices we need to register in Apple Store and insert our info. Facebook has another way to collect user’s info – this is done just during the registration process.
The type of information is the same, but the methods to collect are different.

Do you think that the selected policies are clear to the users?

– Apple
   In our opinion, the Apple has very nice and clear Privacy Policies. For us and others, reading very long policies is very hard, because we are lazy and doesn't want to waste our time on it. Policies of this company's web site are also not very long, so, that is also the main thing.In additition, we would like to mention that Apple uses very interesting "trick". In additition, we would like to mention that Apple uses very interesting "trick". They are using words to made users to read their rules. We think it is important that user have become familar with privacy policies of company and will save money of Apple in this case.

– Facebook
   Facebook's privacy policies on the way of its growth as an Internet social networking site has met a lot of criticism from the users. This famous social network has also been sued several times. Facebook privacy policies has changed in recent years. Soon, it transformed into a network where the greater part of your information is public by default. Today, according to the latest changes in its privacy policies, facebook give no choice but to make certain information public, and this information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads. So, our verdict is that Facebook has very long, hard to read privacy policies and it is done designedly in order that users not read them because they are not fair.

Weekly Task III: Digital Divide

The term digital divide has appeared to denote a dissidence in the family where the husband spent too much time behind a computer to the prejudice of everything else, and his wife could not live with it. Now this funny etymology has been forgotten long time ago, and now describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who do have and people who don't have access and the capability to use the Internet. For example, in Finland, more than 50% of the population have access to the Internet, while in India only 0.05%.  

According to generally accepted views on the information society, its specificity is that the free exchange of information contributes to overcoming poverty and inequality, but for those who disconnected from this exchange, the prospects are dramatically deteriorate. Hence the idea of ​​deliberate "policy of exclusion," which is led by one or another countries and communities - instead of the previous policy of repression.
After we have defined what is "digital divide", we can write our ideas concerning it, based on four governmental and persons points of view.

View 1: Jack Kemp, Freedom Works
Jack Kemp has stated, "The real issue is the lack of wealth-creating opportunities and access to capital in the inner cities and depressed rural areas – the access-to-capital divide." He thinks the government should let private enterprise solve the market problems and should stick to lowering interest rates and removing regulatory barriers. This problem, as two-sided coin – from the one hand, government should solve economical problems, and on the other hand, take actions regarding issue of digital divide. We all know that for access to the Internet, not only the connection is needed, but also a computer, an ADSL modem and and everything else costs money. We believe, that this problem will be solved, if only the government take care of increasing income and life level of the people of rural areas. To sum up, our group agrees with Mr. Kemp's idea that on the way of solving this issue, the first things to be solved are lack of job, education in that areas and a high crime level.

View 2: UK Government
According to the British government's plan, students would be offered free computers for their online studies at home. Though it may seem very sweet at first, in reality no one can prove in which purposes the leaned computers will be used (gaming, watching movies, social networks, etc). That is why this project may be just a loss of huge amounts of money. Speaking about the second project ("digital challenge prize") it seems not so profitable as well. Firstly, it is difficult to understand, how a local authority may influence citizens minds so much. Only a small amount of people would get interested by this, because mostly, people tend to be independent and to have their own mind about what they need. It depends on the citizens themselves, to trust or not. Moreover, lots of authorities in Great Britain are using the Internet in lots of ways already, then why does the government has to create such strange projects?

View 3: Howard J. Blitz
Mr. Howard J. Blitz points that the government budget consists of the taxes and are paid by the taxpayers. In the world exist some countries where citizens get low salaries that give an opportunity only to live, the percent of taxation is very high and no dramatic changes in quality of life. They pay taxes, because they are fear of violent actions that can be taken by the government to punish them. Moreover, people don’t know where money are going and what they are working for. In our opinion that is not right, government should not be the oppressor, nation is just an employer of the government. Of course, that would be nice if the government help to solve this problem of digital divide using our tax money and may be the situation will became better. To solve or not to solve the digital divide problem, that might be the question. The answer will give the audience – nation. Government must make a survey and decide who would like to have 100 Mbps Internet.

View 4: Commission May Declare Broadband 'A Universal Right'
As the  European Commission states, the Internet connection may be established as a universal right for every single person. Now the set connection speed is extremely low - only 28.8 kbits/second dial-up, and the EC wants to establish a broadband connection, which means much higher speeds. High speed Internet access is needed because of the progress and innovations, no one wants to lag behind. Moreover, the dial-up connection speed is totally uncomfortable, that is why the Internet may seem frustrating for beginners, people, who have just started using the Internet and want to try it for themselves without any payments to the telecom companies in order not to loose money, if they (beginners) would not like it.