There’s something inherently interesting about a gathering that dubs itself the Ouagadougou Conference, especially when, after Googling “Ouagadougou” I learn that it’s the capital of Burkina Faso and the gathering is being held in Mountain View, CA (otherwise known as Google Central).
One of the holy grails of this or any other 21st-century website is something called SEO—search engine optimization — or how to be number one on the page when someone uses Google or Bing or something else to answer a question. This isn’t too great a problem if you’re looking for CJ Cherryh, she’s pretty much the only Cherryh around. It gets a bit dicier with the Lynn Abbeys or Jane Fanchers of the world (although, since I started being a bit more diligent about blogging, I’ve managed to rise my profile a bit). Google “really good fantasy writer” and I’m nowhere to be found 
So, figuring out what happens inside the black-box of Google’s search algorithm has become a fairly profitable industry of its own. The Ouagadougou Conference doesn’t exactly reveal trade secrets, but it does hint that it’s not just how sites are linked together that determines their page position, but how users decide which sites actually meet their search criteria and how they modify a sequence of searches in pursuit of an answer.
It’s geek-y stuff, but kind of fascinating, too.
Look Who’s Talking…