Is it ethical to manipulate the search engine results?

Answer 1

Yes it is. Provided you are following ethical means. If you are following the proper ways and means, you will be able to manipulate the search engine results.

Basically this manipulation will happen by itself, as you improve the content, web design, visibility and such other factors of a website.

The process used to manipulate search engine results is called search engine optimization, SEO for short. This entails various different methods and techniques which can be used to gain better raking on search engine's.

However within SEO there are some techniques which are frowned upon by search engine's and the SEO community in general, these techniques are deemed as unethical and are termed as 'Black Hat SEO techniques'.

'White Hat SEO' is the term used to describe the techniques which are deemed as ethical. These can and are followed by leading SEO practitioners across the world to gain better search engine ranking.