HAVE SEARCH ENGINES MUTATED BEYOND USEFULNESS?

So it's minus twenty outside and dreaming of warmer weather, I log on to buy some flip-flops to match my new orange lounge pants. Simple, right? I’ll google up 'flip-flops' or 'athletic sandals' or 'ocean wear' and I should quickly get a hundred hits for companies that make the coolest shoes around. WRONG! Instead, I'm confused by URLS like www.buybargainsonline.com and www.topsellingbrands.com etc... - Who ARE all these companies, anyway? I’m no novice online shopper, but I'd still prefer to give Niketown.com my credit card info - not to mention my business -!- than third-party middleman websites trying to make a buck because I clicked on one of their advertisers, sponsors, or affiliates. I mean, these people can’t actually be selling shoes, can they? I was seriously intrigued and determined to figure out how these online shopping sites manage to jump the search engine queues ahead of Adidas, Clarks, and Birkenstock.com.

The first thing I couldn't figure out was, how is it, that obscure sites like these have webmasters that outsmart the people who built Niketown.com? And how is it they can offer free shipping anyways? I came up with a few theories.

One thing that comes to mind is that since their sole purpose in life is to make smart websites, they can be more cunning about it, adapting quickly to changes in search engine technology. Without the overhead required for design, marketing, real estate, or personnel, whoever runs these websites can focus entirely on the web. And, since most shoe companies have likely outsourced their ebusiness, perhaps details like these get overlooked. As well, if they are anything like the companies I've worked for, making changes to a corporate website requires UN-type resolutions after a series of submissions for change requests, committee referrals, and lengthy process alterations.

Or, perhaps they simply rely on consumer’s familiarity with their brand names and trust that people will type in ‘Nike.com’ and start shopping away. That’s not always such a great idea; try going there, clicking on Canada, and finding the online shopping site. (Most of the others were easy to find)

The next thought I had was that they're all in it together. The myriad of online shopping sites, Google, even the shoe companies! But if that were the case, why would they bother running their own online stores at all? EBusiness sites certainly don't come cheap.

Of course my favorite guess is that there's always the other possibility that they are flat-out, scams. Why? Because they make me think of a fungus that grows readily around a tree trunk, despite the tree's massive size. Taking advantage of the tree's strength and stamina over the years in order to fulfill its petty goals of reproduction. Being a geneticist by training, I set out to prove this theory.

Hesitantly, I clicked on 'About Us' at the bottom of www.topsellingbrands.com. This led me to the home page of www.shoppinghere.net, which led me to more websites selling perfume, pet food, audio books, and vitamins. (What kind of motley crew of shopping is that anyway?) I clicked and I clicked and I clicked. Eventually, I found my way to Zappos.com which boasts the largest online shoe-shopping mall. I still wasn’t convinced of the authenticity of any one website selling 800 top name brand shoes. Are you telling me that this website has an agreement with ALL of these companies? Or that they actually have a system in place that finds my style, size, and colour from 800 different companies and mails them to me for free? Somehow, I’m a disbeliever. Clicking on 'About Us' at Zappos.com tells in marketing-speak, how much easier it is to buy shoes online without the limitations on the size of 'brick and mortar store stockrooms' bla, bla, bla. What strange language, I thought, and kept on clicking.

Through sites selling candles, diamonds, loans, and posters, I surfed in search of anything that looked vaguely legit. Eventually I found my way to the parent investor of Zappos.com, whose extremely brief website describes two guys who used to work for Microsoft. Hmm, I won’t go to where that theory is going. Www.01shoes.com also claims to sell the top 800 brands, and funnily enough sported the exact same set of shoe logos on its main page. This is where things finally get interesting. Clicking on 'About Us' tells the exact same story of brick and mortar. Finally, I felt like I was getting somewhere. It gets better. A quick google for "Inside story" and "online shopping" brings up a page at www.ciao.co.uk for a non-existent product whose sole purpose is obviously to land the surfer on that shopping site. I’m now feeling comfy in my shoes and convinced that these sites are up to no good. I suppose the ultimate test would be to simply buy a pair of shoes from one of these sites and see what happens. Now that would be defeating the whole purpose of the exercise, wouldn’t it?

It would seem that the web, like television and the human genome, is 95% junk. But unlike television, which took about 50 years to evolve into mayhem, and the human genome, which took at least 30,000, it’s taken the web less than 10. Maybe this is a sign of it’s ultimate insignificance, or perhaps even it’s eventual extinction, but scarier still is the slim likelihood of anyone even noticing what’s going on as they click their way through a high-speed web and an even higher speed world.