Website Content Or Propaganda?

March 10, 2008 – 7:57 am

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Lately I’m noticing just how overwhelming the commercial nature of the web really is. Almost every website you land at is selling something, or is geared specifically towards ad revenue due to search engine visibility. It’s not hard to understand why these are the websites that come up so often in searches. The people who optimize websites because they have a financial reason to, end up taking up most of the first spots in search.

Free information or just a sales spiel?

When I land on websites, I wonder, is this legitimate website content or is specific corporate propaganda to sell something? If I’m wondering, then the website in question probably presented something wrong.

It’s hard to even guess at the relationships between websites. If you land at one page and it raves about a product at another page, you can’t help but wonder if the same webmaster controls both domains.

Depending on what you want your website to do, you’ll have to be careful about people’s perceptions of your pages. If you are purely an unbiased informational website, there’s no reason for anyone to get the impression you’re delivering propaganda for other organizations. Allowing customers to leave open feedback is generally one way to ensure a free flow of information about the subject at hand.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with sales text. But when informational pages, reviews, and sales text are all sold as unbiased information, you run into a problem.

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