Having worked developing internet content, applications and businesses since 1998 I have become very familar with the stress associated with working in the internet media industry. Firstly as a developer you are at the mercy of rapidly changing technology, as a business owner you are at the mercy of the challenges of keeping up with your competitors, as an online marketeer you need to be up to date with the latest cool way of selling product, viral, social, email or banner. But one thing that unites all of us in our quest for internet glory is the understanding and appreication of what it takes to succeed in internet marketing. The term “google dance” was coined to describe the effect websites feel when google goes through an update due to algorithmic, architectural or other changes. The google dance  has a very negative effect on those people actively involved in the business. For example if you run a business that employs 8 people, turns over $3 million USD per annum and relies on Google for 80% of its customers you can guarantee one thing, the google update is going to take you for a ride.

For SEO professionals the latest update (April 2008) seems to have put a bigger cat among the pigeons and while this post is about webpsychosis rather than SEO, the latest google update is where the two meet. There is a psychological condition called “learned helplessness” and I am sure this is what most SEO professionals are feeling right now.

 Defined by Wiki:

“Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to believe that it is helpless in a particular situation. It has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the human being or the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances. Learned helplessness theory is the view that depression results from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation, or situations(Seligman, 1975). Examples can be found in schools, mental institutions, orphanages, or long-term care facilities where the patients have failed or been stripped of agency for long enough to cause their feelings of inadequacy to persist.^[”

Google controls so much more that our search engine rankings, they control or business, our sales, our riches and our subsequent happiness.  Maybe we need to wake up to what might be happening.