AMC Coverage 2008: Google’s Eric Schmidt: The Internet is a Cesspool

CEO Eric Schmidt explains why relevance is the key to increasing your rank in Google

The AMC wrapped up with about 200 of us going to Google’s Mountain View campus where we had the opportunity to get lunch in their cafeteria and hear a little about how Google innovates and how publishers can take advantage of partnering with the search and video giant.

CEO Eric Schmidt said the Internet is a cesspool and it’s our job as publishers, with strong brands, to help clean it up. “Brands are the solution, not the problem. That’s how you organize the cesspool. In a world of no constraints, where anyone can publish anything, brand affinity is clearly high wired. It’s so fundamental to human existence it’s not going to go away. How else would you organize society?” asked Schmidt.

[text_ad]

“We don’t want you to be successful”

While Google has long positioned themselves as partners with magazines and other content creators, he offered no advice for how we can increase our page rankings.

“We actually don’t want you to be successful,” quipped Schmidt, meaning of course that he doesn’t want to offer any one content creator any particular advantage. After all, his search engine algorithms are trying to find the sites with the most relevant content, not sites who’ve been successful at cheating the algorithms. “The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance,” said Schmidt.

More coverage from AMC 2008:

• Reshaping the Model for Magazines
• Independent Magazines Talk Digital
• Facebook’s COO: “It’s an open web… this is important for the long run, but difficult for monetization in the short run.”
• 4 Tips (and 3 Results) for Setting your Content Free, from TVGuide.com’s Christy Tanner
• 4 Online Publishing Tips from CondeNet’s Editorial Director, Jamie Pallot