Net Neutrality - Why Every SEO & Small Business Should Care

As a profession, we SEOs have a lot of concerns to factor into creating a successful strategy for any given client. There are platform, linking, and competition concerns that can all determine the success of the campaign as a whole. With all of these concerns, the last thing we need to worry about is whether or not an ISP will allow unfettered access to a client's site.

Welcome to the politics of Network Neutrality! Net Neutrality, as an issue, has come about as the result of the large telecoms claiming that while providing internet service, they have the right to limit bandwidth or block access to web sites that don't pay them a premium to access their networks.

What's so bad about that?

This sets a fairly dangerous precedent in determining what sites will be given preferential treatment. Up until the point when the telecoms begin flexing this new muscle (if they're allowed to), search engines will remain responsible in determining what sites are accessed. The search engines have always done this on a fairly egalitarian model by determining website relevance through algorithms. Big telecom will determine relevance based on who pays them according to whatever tier system they implement to maximize profits.

How does this affect small business?

Small businesses will feel the crunch especially hard. The first consideration is access. These restrictions mean that websites are forced to shell out more money just to be able to appear on your screen. There's no guarantee that some ISPs wouldn't block access to every search engine with an algorithm in favor of their own engine which lists sites based on which site paid the most for certain keywords. Also, because we all know that the attention span of the average surfer is extremely limited, if ISPs are allowed to cut the speed to JoeCommerce.com, abandon rates will soar and Joe won't be able to compete with the online versions of big box stores that can afford to pay off Comcast and Time Warner.

How does this affect SEOs?

Obviously our client base would shrink. How much is unsure. It really depends on how rampant the practice is used. Given the already monopolistic nature of Big Telecom, I would expect it beginning with bad and getting worse rather quickly. It also can't be determined the degree to which this would cast a shadow over our industry. With a mainstream media that still fails to give an accurate portrayal of what search marketing is all about, we could well be stigmatized along with the shady characters as we have in the past.

Most of the ramifications affecting SEOs can't yet be realized. One example; my last client was completely focused on geo-targeting in the Minneapolis area. All of the SEO, quality content, blog marketing, and linking in the world won't do a bit of good if he doesn't pay the local internet monopolies (Qwest & Time Warner) a duty to be accessed by their users. It could also disrupt the good faith relationship that the online community currently enjoys with the major search engines.

After all, it's the search engines that Big Telecom wants to penalize, as they're the ones “guilty” of eating up their bandwidth. Take Verizon's senior vice president Jim Thorne's comments last February as an example:

"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers,"

Thorne goes on to say:

"The only way we are going to attract the truly huge amounts of capital needed to build out these networks is to strike down governmental entry barriers and allow providers to realize profits,"

Here Thorne is trying to argue that by the government stepping in and requiring ISPs to do what their name implies, it will prevent network expansion. He wants the fed to stand by while his industry destroys the free market online for the sake of concentrated profits. That's not capitalism. And you would think a Q1 earning of $1.63 billion along with pioneering EVDO broadband technology would be attractive enough to prospective investors.

What about consumers?

If these practices are implemented in a way that muscles small dot commerce out of the market, we are all poorer because of it. If the ISPs do decide they want their own engines and all of your current search options now magically redirect to theirs, it stands to reason that the quality of the SERPs will decline as well.

Conclusion:

The internet has become the great equalizer of our time. From commerce to politics, we are all made richer by the diversity of ideas, goods, and services it provides us. ISPs provide access to the internet; plain and simple. We, as consumers, pay for network speeds on a tier system. As a driver, I pay taxes to drive on roads. Sometimes I pay a toll to drive on faster and better maintained roads. I don't think that my destination should be charged money every time I drive there. Bad analogy? Consider this. The same companies we pay for internet access also provide us with television. They don't charge TV content providers to run their ad-rich television shows, so why charge internet content providers? We, along with the content providers, shouldn't be subjected to a double tier internet just to receive access to all of the content on the web.

Bretton Jones is owner of Twin Cities Search Engine Marketing located in Minneapolis. He has been working in web ever since high school in 1999 and has been doing search marketing for small businesses since 2002. He runs Search Engine Policy, a blog devoted to covering the legal and political aspects of search and the internet.

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