Google and the social media lottery

... and what it means for search engines as publishers. Google's acquisition of PostRank (a social media monitoring service) has got SEO specialists speculating. Is search engine ranking for a given web page suddenly going to have a lot more to do with readers' engagement with online content?

At first sight, this all sounds very reasonable. You can understand why Google would want to increase the extent to which the actions and interest of independent third parties affect search engine ranking. These things are (usually) much harder to manipulate.

But if this is the way we're heading (I say 'we' - I'm nothing to do with Google and I've no idea what they're actually planning!), I'm slightly worried.

Because while Google et al don't do quite the same as traditional publishers when it comes to adding editorial value to written content, they do, through search engine ranking, apply the same kind of quality control as any traditional book or journal publisher. In other words, they effectively get to decide what we read.

And if (it's a big if, of course - as I said, I don't know what's being planned) what we read is going to be based on what gets commented on (celebrity scandal, anyone?) or discussed in social media, I don't necessarily think the cream will rise to the top. It would equate popularity with quality, and five minutes of reality TV should be enough to convince anyone that they don't always go hand in hand...