The SEO effect. Mapping the optimized landscape around controversial policy issues in Italy

This research investigates the use of search engine optimization (SEO) by political and non-political actors to amplify the visibility of search engine results. While there has been much theoretical speculation around the role of SEO techniques in boosting the ranking appearance of a website, few empirical studies have been undertaken to understand the extent to which SEO techniques are used to promote visibility online. This study takes Italy as a case study to map the information landscape around nine highly controversial issues during the Italian electoral campaign of 2022. Using a combination of digital methods and a tool detecting optimization in websites, our article aims at examining which actors employ SEO techniques to foster the circulation of their ideas and agendas around hot topics. Our analysis reveals that information channels, institutions, and companies are predominant, while political actors remain in the background. Contextually, data indicate that SEO techniques are employed by several recurrent editorial groups, company owners, and institutions. Ultimately, we discuss the impact of SEO techniques on the circulation and visibility of information around relevant policy issues, contributing to shaping and influencing public debate and opinion.

Rethinking gaming: The ethical work of optimization in web search engines

When measures come to matter, those measured find themselves in a precarious situation. On the one hand, they have a strong incentive to respond to measurement so as to score a favourable rating. On the other hand, too much of an adjustment runs the risk of being flagged and penalized by system operators as an attempt to 'game the system'. Measures, the story goes, are most useful when they depict those measured as they usually are and not how they intend to be. In this article, I explore the practices and politics of optimization in the case of web search engines. Drawing on materials from ethnographic fieldwork with search engine optimization (SEO) consultants in the United Kingdom, I show how maximizing a website's visibility in search results involves navigating the shifting boundaries between 'good' and 'bad' optimization. Specifically, I am interested in the ethical work performed as SEO consultants artfully arrange themselves to cope with moral ambiguities provoked and delegated by the operators of the search engine. Building on studies of ethics as a practical accomplishment, I suggest that the ethicality of optimization has itself become a site of governance and contestation. Studying such practices of 'being ethical' not only offers opportunities for rethinking popular tropes like 'gaming the system', but also draws attention to often-overlooked struggles for authority at the margins of contemporary ranking schemes.

Experience of maintaining laboratory educational website's sustainability

Laboratory methodology websites are specialized niche websites. The visibility of a niche website transforms it into an authority site on a particular “niche of knowledge.” This article presents some ways in which a laboratory methodology website can maintain its sustainability. The optimal composition of the website includes a basic content, a blog, and an ancillary part. This article discusses experimenting with the search engine optimization query results page. Strategic placement of keywords and even phrases, as well as fragmentation of the post's material, can improve the website's visibility to search engines. Hyperlinks open a chain reaction of additional links and draw attention to the previous posts. Publications in printed periodicals are a substantial part of a niche website presence on the Internet. Although this article explores a laboratory website on the basis of our hands-on expertise maintaining “Grossing Technology in Surgical Pathology” (www.grossing-technology.com) website with a high volume of traffic for more than a decade, the recommendations presented here for developing an authority website can be applied to other professional specialized websites. The authority websites visibility and sustainability are preconditions for aggregating them in a specialized educational laboratory portal.

Developing an internet presence for your practice

Yesterday, it was the Yellow Pages that informed the public where and how to reach their physicians. Today, it is the Internet. With the Internet, patients have 24/7 access to your practice that will do far more than any Yellow Pages or advertising could possibly do. This article discusses the importance of the Internet for the contemporary physician and how to create a useful and interactive Web site.