{"id":39488,"date":"2018-03-06T14:20:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T13:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiig.de\/?p=39488\/"},"modified":"2021-02-10T15:03:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:03:17","slug":"organic-search-metaphors-help-cultivate-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiig.de\/en\/organic-search-metaphors-help-cultivate-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Organic search: How metaphors help cultivate the web"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomatoes, apples and bread can be \u2018organic.\u2019 But search results? Anna Jobin<\/strong> and Malte Ziewitz<\/strong> wonder about the currency of agricultural metaphors in web search and show how they do different work for different users. This article is part of our blog series How metaphors shape the digital society<\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Do you prefer your search results \u2018organic\u2019? What may sound funny to the rest of us has long been a concern for search engine professionals around the world. Already the 2010 version of Google\u2019s own Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide called those ten blue links usually associated with search results \u2018organic\u2019 \u2013 everything else was \u2018paid\u2019 or \u2018sponsored\u2019 (Fig. 1).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Google\u2019s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (2010), p. 3<\/p><\/div>\n

Interestingly, such agricultural metaphors are quite common when it comes to search. Hyperlinks are discussed as parts of the \u2018ecology\u2019 of Google products. Groups of websites linking to each other constitute \u2018link farms.\u2019 Links that have been built with the intention of improving rankings might be called out as \u2018unnatural.\u2019 And when links break and lead to nowhere over time, you\u2019d better be concerned about \u2018link rot.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The imagery is intriguing, but it also raises some important questions. Neither links nor search results grow on trees and bushes. So what kind of work (or <\/span>metaphorical service<\/span><\/a>) do these metaphors do? How are they employed by those who use them on a daily basis, including users, search marketers, engineers, and Google representatives? To start answering these questions, let\u2019s have a closer look at how \u2013 and for whom \u2013 search results become \u2018organic.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Dossier: How metaphors shape the digital society<\/a><\/p>\n

Delineating marketable space<\/b><\/p>\n

In their 1998 paper on \u2018<\/span>The Anatomy of a Large-scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine<\/span><\/a>,\u2019 Sergey Brin and Larry Page were careful to distinguish their proposal from \u2018commercial\u2019 and \u2018advertising oriented\u2019 engines. A key design goal, they wrote, was \u2018to push more development and understanding into the academic realm\u2019 and generate results based on the logic of citations rather than the preferences of advertisers. Twenty years later, it would be hard to see the engine as anything but commercial, generating <\/span>$27.2 billion in advertising revenue in 2017<\/span><\/a> alone. <\/span><\/p>\n

What has allowed the founders to stick to their original plan while also monetizing the technology is a distinction between two types of results: organic and non-organic ones. Not surprisingly, this distinction runs through corporate communications like a golden thread. According to <\/span>Google\u2019s advertising program AdWords<\/span><\/a>, for example, an organic search result is a \u2018free listing in Google Search that appears because it\u2019s relevant to someone\u2019s search terms.\u2019 A non-organic search result, in contrast, is a paid advertisement. The selective invocation of \u2018organic\u2019 thus performs two kinds of links \u2013\u00a0those served by Google unilaterally and those served by Google on behalf of paying advertisers.<\/span><\/p>\n

This differentiation provides the basis for a business model that depends on what <\/span>economists have called a \u2018two-sided market.\u2019<\/span><\/a> Whereas users search for useful information, advertisers search for users. Although organic and non-organic links are produced in different ways, they both are triggered by the same query and appear on the same page. Calling some results \u2018organic\u2019 thus makes it possible for a company like Google to claim that they are not accepting money in exchange for influence while also generating revenue through ads displayed in those coveted first spots.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regulating participation<\/b><\/p>\n

In addition to making search results marketable, the distinction has further implications for all those who depend on being ranked and may seek to participate in the production of results. Depending on where and how they want to promote their websites, businesses, individuals, and organizations face some very different challenges. <\/span><\/p>\n

For paid listings, an industry of pay-per-click (PPC) specialists helps webmasters run campaigns in non-organic search results. These professionals work with a wealth of tools and data to bid on ads to be displayed with search results for certain keywords. For organic listings, the situation is more complicated. In this case, an entire industry of search engine optimization (SEO) consultants offers webmasters to optimize their pages in order to rank \u2018organically.\u2019 Although their methods differ, both groups aim to appear high up on the results page for specific terms.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the perspective of webmasters, then, the distinction helps to constitute two very different forms of intervention. As the officially sanctioned approach, PPC is accompanied by a sophisticated infrastructure of information and support, including dashboards, help forums, and analytics tools for individual advertisers. SEO, in contrast, <\/span>operates in a moral grey zone<\/span><\/a>. Although Google has issued some basic guidelines for designing websites, these tend to be generic and only selectively enforced. Not surprisingly, this ambiguity is difficult to navigate. Among other things, webmasters and marketers have to figure out what kind of changes to a website are permissible and thus \u2018organic\u2019\u2013\u00a0and what kind of changes do transgress into the realm of \u2018un-organic\u2019 manipulation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hiding in plain sight<\/b><\/p>\n

Although metaphors like \u2018organic\u2019 play an important role in structuring the work of operators, webmasters, and marketers, it is important to remind ourselves that the implications are not obvious to everyone. In fact, research has shown that especially search engine users are generally not aware of the distinction between different kinds of links on the search results page. For example, a <\/span>recent study at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences<\/span><\/a> suggests that, when asked to identify organic search results and ads on five different screenshots, \u2018only 1.3 percent of participants\u2019 are able to do so correctly. So even though the notion of \u2018organic search\u2019 makes perfect sense for marketers and operators, it does not have much currency with users.<\/span><\/p>\n

This might not be an accident. In particular, it is interesting to see that, in stark contrast to the term\u2019s prominence in search marketing materials, there is hardly any mention of \u2018organic\u2019 in user-facing communication. The company\u2019s comprehensive guide on \u2018<\/span>How Search Works<\/span><\/a>\u2019, for example, uses \u2018organic\u2019 exactly once \u2013\u00a0ironically in a section that assures the reader that organic search results will always be generated independently from \u2018clearly labeled\u2019 advertising. <\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, designating search results as \u2018organic\u2019 could \u2013 somewhat counter-intuitively \u2013 reinforce a belief in results as something \u2018natural\u2019 and given. For users, then, the business of web search is hiding in plain sight.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cultivating the web<\/b><\/p>\n

So where does this leave us? Technically speaking, the idea of distinguishing \u2018organic\u2019 from \u2018non-organic\u2019 results does not make much sense. Any search results page is a carefully constructed product of design and use. There is nothing inherently \u2018organic\u2019 about a list of computationally generated links. Nonetheless, the label has developed into something far beyond a mere description. As a metaphor, \u2018organic search\u2019 provides a focal point for ordering an entire field of social, economic, and political practice. <\/span><\/p>\n

As social scientists, we have a rich set of tools at our hands to study how this work plays out in practice. How do these agricultural metaphors shape the lives and practices of users, analysts, and engineers? For whom do these distinctions hold and under what conditions? What would it take to undo them? In farming as in web search, making things organic takes an awful lot of work.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Anna Jobin<\/span><\/i><\/a> is an International Research Scholar at Tufts University (USA) and an affiliate of the Health Ethics and Policy Lab at ETHZ (Switzerland). Her research is partly funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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Malte Ziewitz<\/span><\/i><\/a> is Assistant Professor at the Department for Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University (USA).<\/span><\/i><\/i><\/i><\/p>\n