Huria Search - Search the Global Black Community by Troy Johnson

Editors Note: As of March 2016, after a 5 year run, Huria Search's run as a standalone site has ended. The Search engine and the related content has been folded into AALBC.com.

Introducing Huria Search: Search independent websites that deliver meaningful content written by or about, the global Black community.

As the webmaster of AALBC.com, I've been an active observer of web-based content, of interest to my visitors, for almost 15 years. I share what I find in my eNewsletter, website, social media and by word of mouth. Despite vast improvements in the capability of technology, and the advent of social media, the ability to find quality, conscious, content written for the or about the Black community has become much more difficult.

As the largest Black oriented websites became absorbed into large corporate entities, there has been a trend toward the creation of content heavily focused on scandal, particularly celebrity scandal. For example, here are just a few titles of articles recently published and promoted by large corporate, Black oriented, websites:

83-Year-Old Caught TRICKIN'
Amber Rose After Kanye West Apology: "He Was An A$$hole"
Jessica Simpson Announces Pregnancy Beyonce Style
Kim Kardashian Wedding: E! Reveals The Truth Behind The Scenes
Justin Bieber Fans React On Twitter To Paternal Suit Allegations
Reggae Star Vybz Kartel Denied Bail In Murder Case
Top 5 Most Notable Sexual Harassment Cases

The primary goal of a publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder wealth. As a result, the type of content generated is designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Any consideration for variety, the promotion of negative stereotypes and imagery, or a potential adverse impact on Black people is purely incidental. I don't mean to suggest that this type of content should not be produced at all. The problem is that search results tend to favor large corporations, and as a result, their type of content dominates. Large corporate entities can buy sponsored links, pay professionals to perform search engine optimization and utilize other tricks to game search engine results to skew in their favor. Over the past year I've observed an accelerated trend in search results favoring large corporate sites. The impact of this trend is that content generated by smaller websites, regardless of quality, is pushed so far down in the search results that it is never discovered.

I blogged about this recently after seeing how search engine results for a popular African American author has changed over time (read the blog post). Search results matter because this is how most sites attract new visitors. There is a direct correlation between search engine ranking and website traffic. This condition raises the barriers of entry for new independent websites interested in producing serious content and jeopardizes the survival of sites that already do. I discussed this issue in a recent interview (read interview) Huria Search was born out of an effort to combat this condition. Huria Search uses a customized and curated version of the Google search engine. I believe you will find the results of a "Huria search" a refreshing improvement over conventional search engine results when looking for content generated for or about the global Black community (read more about why Huria Search was created). Huria.org was launched, November 5th 2011. If you believe in Huria Search's goals, please share this message and the Huria Search website http://huria.org with others. It is up to us, as individuals, to promote and support what we believe is important. I hope Huria Search will become a tool to help us do that. If you see ways to make the Huria Search site better please let me know. Comment below or send me an email at info@huria.org Huria.org is not a revenue generating site -- you'll find no advertisements or sponsored links. Our goal is to promote and support independent websites to contribute to the global Black community in a meaningful way. Peace, Troy Johnson

Related Links Find information on authors and books http://thebestblackbooksearch.com/ or http://bit.ly/tbbbse