As Cory Docotorow points out, this great story is an example of how Google can turn kids from cheaters to independent website creators.
"Can I make a web page and write things?"
"Yes you can. I'll help you"
"And can I make some other pages and link to my web page so Google likes it?"
"That would be cheating - people have tried that and Google counts links from people who have lots of links pointing at them more than links from pages that no-one links to".
"Oh. OK. I'll write a page, and you can link to it, and you can tell your friends to link to it, and they can tell their friends to link to it, and then everyone will find my page."
"Well, that would work, but only if you think of something interesting to write."
"Oh. I'll have to think of some funny stories then."
And so he did!
Posted by Aaron Swartz on May 26, 2002 08:35 AM