Take a little sand and a handful of beans. Add the beans to an empty vase. Add the sand on top. Shake shake shake. What do you see on top?

SEOs are the new creators of 'taste'. We think the wisdom of the crowd is on Digg's home page but that's not really true. That's because Diggers with large friends’ networks get dugg a lot more and SEOs spend a great deal of time placing the stories there in the first place. 

SEOs too are responsible for what lands up on SERPs. We all know SEOs vigorously train Googlebot by building networks of valuable links. Whatever their tactics the outcome should be top rankings, most watched video, most dugg story, most reddit, etc. Put yourself in a web surfer's shoes for moment and go search for something. Perhaps use a recent SEO campaign keyword of yours. Do you see your beans? The same beans I see?

I think it fair to say that Google represents the global human consciousness at any given point in time. But if you were a brilliant SEO, had the time, the money, the will, you could quite easily get Christianity to rank higher than Islam or Judaism. Sidebar: this article has absolutely nothing to do with religion. The point is made by example.

My 8 year old knows barbie.com and she's about to Google "Pink Toy"

For arguments sake only, suppose you landed an infomercial client pedaling anti aging cream and you succeed in rankings everywhere. What if that anti aging cream were to be found cancer causing in 10 years from now?

Be responsible and choose wisely which bubbles to blow. SEOs and IMs can influence culture, society and values by doing their jobs well, even if their only motivations were rankings and remuneration. Ironically, perhaps SEOs have more to do with taste making than does the wisdom of the crowd.