The Times has hired a Search Editor to work on searchability and search engine optimization.

By Pandia Guest Writer Lars Iselid, Internetbrus

The Swedish journalist Martin Jönsson of Svenska Dagbladet is arguing for the new term “Search Editor” or “Editor of Search”.

The Times

Martin tells the story about him meeting the Editor of Chief of the British Times, Anne Spackman, who told him that they have hired a so-called Search Editor.

The Times’ Search Editor is to explain to the editorial staff how the search structure of the Web functions, work on indexed pages and improve the rankings of their newspaper articles in Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.

This is an interesting development. Will the term “Search Editor” replace “Web Editor” in future job ads?

The ideal Search Editor

The ultimate solution would be an editor with knowledge of the following three topics:

1. Searchability through Web search engines, i.e. the external searchability
2. Information access on the site itself, i.e. internal searchability
3. Competences in copy-writing that combine the needs of human readers as well as search engines

Points 1 and 2 also include knowledge on how people search in general, on the Web and when doing on-site search.

If you do not have a person with all these competences, you will need a Web Editor/Web Journalist, an Information Arcitect/Usability Expert and a Search Engine Optimization Expert — and they must all be able to communicate with each other.

Because of this the optimal solution could be to have one expert combining all three areas. It will be hard to find persons with such a wide knowledge base, however.

Maybe the newspapers can look for technically oriented librarians with good insight into searching and Web search, and a background from journalism or usability studies? I believe this could be a possible market for librarians that face unemployment today.

If these experts known more than one language, that will be an advantage, as online newspapers and news sites often produce pages in several languages (especially in countries that do not have English as one of the main national languages).

Today we find colleges and universities offering studies in information architecture. In a few years we could see courses for Search Editors as well.

Or maybe we should look for a more pleasant term than Search Editor?