Grounded In Reality

In what could be seen as ‘user generated search results,’ Yahoo is adding a service to its search capabilities called Buzz. Users will be given the option to vote on articles; promoting news they like or demoting news they dislike, that will directly affect what appears on the coveted page 1 of search. An excerpt from an article yesterday on NYTimes.com:

“Yahoo is combining users’ votes with information it gathers from its Internet search service, so that when search traffic spikes for an item or topic, it will get more ‘buzz.’ Yahoo editors, not computer programs, will decide whether an item will be placed on the portal’s front page, which receives more than 90 million visitors in the United States each month.”

BusinessWeek.com also weighed in with a story this morning clarfiying more specifics on how users will interact with Buzz:

“More than 100 major news sites have agreed to place Yahoo “Buzz Up” buttons next to their articles and other content. The partners include Gannett’s (GCI) USA Today, News Corp.’s (NWS) Wall Street Journal, and Time Warner’s (TWX) Entertainment Weekly. A click on the button is tallied as a user endorsement and sent to Yahoo’s Buzz page. Those with the highest scores are considered for placement on Yahoo’s front page. But Yahoo is retaining some editorial control: An internal team will have final say over the stories featured on the main home page. Yahoo says this is to guard against articles deemed lewd, violent, or capable of exposing the company to legal liability…”

Can a service like this really work? What are the implications for businesses that (as a result of Buzz) appear at the top of search results? A demonstration by Yahoo proved to have a surprisingly weighty outcome. An excerpt from the aforementioned NYTimes.com article states:

“In a test of the service this year, Yahoo linked from its front page to content from Esquire magazine for just three hours. In that brief period, traffic to the Esquire.com site, which already allows users of Digg and Reddit to vote on its stories, doubled for the month.”

So the real question is: Will online customer relations now be a company’s SEO strategy?

Services like this one just further implicate that companies must take an interest in what is being said about their brand online. The example above shows a positive spike for Esquire, but what if there were an article about a brand or service that wasn’t so popular? Could developments like these keep your client forever buried in search results?