Will SEO Become The Law For Federal Agencies?

Nov 14, 2007 at 8:29am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Public Policy Blog wrote about a new bill that will require federal agencies to make their sites and information search engine accessible.

The bill, E-Government Reauthorization Act of 2007, is being reviewed by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The guidelines of the bill state:

Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of the E-Government Reauthorization Act of 2007, the Director shall promulgate guidance and best practices to ensure that publicly available online Federal Government information and services are made more accessible to external search capabilities, including commercial and governmental search capabilities. The guidance and best practices shall include guidelines for each agency to test the accessibility of the websites of that agency to external search capabilities.

If this bill is passed, federal agencies will have to comply with the guidelines within 2 years of the bill’s enactment.

In short, it is possible that “best practices” SEO will become the law for US federal agencies.

Postscript From Danny: Which also means someone, perhaps the US government itself, will have to codify what exactly “best practices” are for SEO.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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