Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the process search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc. use to control the visibility of a website or page in “natural” search results.

I personally do not agree with this method and think it needs to be changed.

In the case of the mosque that was built near the ground-zero site, false reporting was located at the top of search results because the articles that made it seem like the mosque was located on ground-zero were more appealing.  To me this is a major ethical problem that affects everybody, not simply journalists.

Too many people in today’s society take everything they read on the internet as the truth.  It is inconceivable to many that somebody out there is getting a kick out of the fact that you believed their lie.

Unfortunately, there are those that would lie or blur the lines between truth and lies to gain more publicity.  If anything, SEO should be used to weed out the false articles and bump the good reporting to the top.  The way SEO works now is simply making the public dumber by putting bogus articles at the top of search results, because they fit a set of rules and sound more appealing.

If people keep reading stories or articles that use dishonest reporting and then try to correct their mistakes late, they’ll condemn journalism as a whole.  It’s a classic case of a few ruining a good thing for the many.

Obviously the internet is a relatively easy thing to navigate through and if you really want to find an article or story, chances are, you can even if it’s buried under articles that contain falsehoods.  But the point is, it shouldn’t be like that in the first place.  Authors that practice dishonest reporting shouldn’t be rewarded by being placed at the top of result queues.  The top should be reserved for articles that sacrifice the truth for nothing.