Search Engines Are Changing - Are You Ready?

So what does 2008 have in store for us from an Internet search point of view? As we set out plans for Clients our main observation is that the traditional definition of search is becoming even more blurry. Whilst we don’t have Mystic Meg on board the Rocket (thankfully nor Russell Grant) we can make some well educated assumptions of what could happen in the world of search.

Finding what you want on the Internet will increasingly not always mean going to Google and typing the search term you think most relevant. Although this will still be the way that the vast majority of people will behave, as businesses we need to understand the many other ways available to us. This will mean we can attract the right type of individual to our website. In short, the one’s most likely to become our customers.

The right search engine

This coming year, prospects and customers will be able to find your business on the web through many other ways, these include:-

• Vertical Search – industry specific search engines i.e. www.globrix.com for property search. There will most likely be a specific search engine for your own market place. Do you know what it is?

• Mobile Search – using the traditional generic search engines already set up for mobile search. Google call it the “Mobile Web”, and they rank websites very differently compared to the “Web”. Rankings differ in the main based upon how well an organisation has developed their website to provide a quality experience to the mobile user.

• Social Networks – an ever-growing phenomenon. They know very nearly everything about their members and now offer the ability for businesses to tap into this to attract a more specific and targeted audience to their websites.

• People Search – watch out!! Sites such as http://www.pipl.com can search the web for all your personal details and contributions you may have made. They then present pages of results all about you. Most social networks have now opened up the doors for the search engine spiders to pull out certain information about you. So, make sure you privacy setting are at the level you’d want them to be.

• Blog Search – not just blog topics, but all blog posts can now be found by engines like www.technorati.com and of course blogsearch.google.com.  So if you want to find out what people think about your brand, or you want to find out what other people think of things, this is an area that can help.

• Search Engines for Search Engines – visit Wikipedia's list of search engines to see how many are listed here, this is an ever growing set of urls, and there are more out there than are listed here. If anything some of the names should provide some amusement.

We believe 2008 is the year when these types of search will be crossing the early adopter chasm and becoming more common place. So, be aware of them, know how to select which ones can benefit your business and then work out how to use them. As always, if you need any help or advice on this please give us a shout.