January 18, 2009 by Jay Smith
Critics of segmentation have pointed out that some people value different parts of a web site to others. Some people, for example, browse the comments on a news article before the actual article as a way of getting an idea if it’s worth their time. Therefore, an overarching theory of what’s most valuable on a website is problematic.
To be honest however, I think mild inconvenience for a minority is a price worth paying, particularly when you consider the advantages for websites and the Internet in general.
One such advantage that I haven’t outlined yet is the effect on spam. Segmentation could severely impede the progress of current popular spam techniques. On a basic level, it wouldn’t take a decent segmentation programme long to expose the kind of simple, fake websites used by spammers as worthless to the search engines. Some of these sites rally aren’t much more than boilerplate elements and so would end up being almost completely ignored by search engines.
Beyond that, poorly written or repetitive content has the potential to be viewed as a boilerplate element by segmentation programmes and therefore, rightly ignored. Segmentation also has the potential, when cross-referenced with existing anti-spam measures to identify spamming systems employed over and over again.
Overall, I think segmentation is a good idea. Its two main benefits, that it will save time and resources for search engine spiders and that it will increase the profile of good, content rich site at the expense of bad ones easily outweigh the slight niggles the system may create.
Let’s hope at least one of the big three can put it into practise soon.
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