Google Teaches States About SEO
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | April 30, 2007 | Share This
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Google has joined forces with four states to make public records more search engine friendly. Arizona, California, Utah and Virgina will work with Google to index content that’s currently available on their sites, but invisible to search spiders. Utah’s Department of Workforce job listings, for example, or colonial history documents from the Library of Virginia, will soon show up in search results. Google will use it’s sitemap protocol to implement a universal web standard on the states’ public databases. From the New York Times,
“In the state of California alone, more than 100,000 new Web pages, including some from extensive databases, will be available through search engines, said Clark Kelso, the state’s chief information officer.
“Paul Taylor, chief strategy officer at the Center for Digital Government, a research and consulting company in California, said that the effort fits into a 40-year trend toward more transparency in government.
“I think it is good public policy,” Mr. Taylor said. “And it helps redeem a lot of effort that people have put in to make things accessible that haven’t been readily findable.””
Some people have expressed concern that the increased visibility of government records will create personal security issues. Nothing Google indexes, though, will come from non-public databases. Google hopes to continue their work with other officials at the State, Local and Federal level.