Hindman and the Googlearchy

The author, Hindman, talks about the different layers of the internet, separating hardware, software, data packets and the people that use it. It is imperative to look at the structure of the internet to understand how it can be used to ones advantage, especially when it comes to the subject of politics. Hyperlinks are a key layer in the internet structure and it is interesting how important it is to get linked to, to increase the rank of your site. Furthermore, I also found interesting how we all use search engines such as Google to find sites and unless it is listed on a search engine or referred to by someone else or if we casually stumble upon a site, we do mainly rely on search engines. So the sites that are more likely to be seen are almost always the most heavily linked sites. Hindman talks about “Googlearchy” and how Google will determine, consistently, the most viewed sites. The more links a site has the more views it will get, according to Hindman. Therefore as sites with more links keep getting more and more links and views the ones with less links remain obscure. I found interesting but I guess shouldn’t be too surprised that the author mentions how the highest percentage of online traffic is towards pornographic sites and the smallest percentage of traffic towards news sites. Hindman also mentions how although most of the people that use the internet are younger, it’s the older folks that have the higher percentages when it comes to political website traffic. But of course the decline of political involvement in younger generations has been a known fact for several years now.