Rethinking gaming: The ethical work of optimization in web search engines

Abstract

When measures come to matter, those measured find themselves in a precarious situation. On the one hand, they have a strong incentive to respond to measurement so as to score a favourable rating. On the other hand, too much of an adjustment runs the risk of being flagged and penalized by system operators as an attempt to ‘game the system’. Measures, the story goes, are most useful when they depict those measured as they usually are and not how they intend to be. In this article, I explore the practices and politics of optimization in the case of web search engines. Drawing on materials from ethnographic fieldwork with search engine optimization (SEO) consultants in the United Kingdom, I show how maximizing a website’s visibility in search results involves navigating the shifting boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ optimization. Specifically, I am interested in the ethical work performed as SEO consultants artfully arrange themselves to cope with moral ambiguities provoked and delegated by the operators of the search engine. Building on studies of ethics as a practical accomplishment, I suggest that the ethicality of optimization has itself become a site of governance and contestation. Studying such practices of ‘being ethical’ not only offers opportunities for rethinking popular tropes like ‘gaming the system’, but also draws attention to often-overlooked struggles for authority at the margins of contemporary ranking schemes.