I’ve been thinking a good deal about how we find information on the web over the last few weeks. We all should be doing that… we’re supposedly doing marketing on the web, right?
This week, since I’m a Yale grad school alumn, I decided to move my blog over to a blog.yale.edu hosted blog here. One of the things I struggled with at first was that by moving to the blog.yale.edu system, I had to contend with this policy:
“All accounts on blogs.yale.edu are considered “personal space.” While many bloggers intend for their material to be widely distributed and easily accessible, we need to balance the ability to publish with the privacy of users. In line with this policy, we have disabled search engines from indexing the content of blogs.yale.edu, which means that a Google search will not find your blog.”
That immediately should be a red flag to a seasoned marketer such as myself. Why on earth would I want to move from something like my hosted Wordpress blog at samharrelson.com with lots of good Google juice going back to 2004? Don’t I want my content to be spidered, optimized, searchable and easily found in the search engines so that I can get more traffic, increase my personal brand and then become a marketing mogul?
No, I don’t.
One thing that Facebook and Twitter have taught me recently is that finding information on the web that is highly relevant, valuable and interesting does not necessitate a search engine. I’d go so far as to say that in some cases the costs (spam, constant need to optimize, drive by commenters) outweigh the potential benefits.
I’m finding that’s the case for my personal blog. So, it’s with great excitement that I move away from the Google stranglehold on my traffic and put myself out of that loop. Instead, the people who know me, want to know me or want to really read what I write will go to my blog regardless (even with it’s long and kooky url of http://blogs.yale.edu/roller/page/samharrelson). Sure, I’ll miss out on traffic and perceived Google juice, but the quality outweighs the quantity.
Sometimes it’s better to pull than to push… even in marketing yourself.
I think this concept of shifting perceptions about searching and finding on the web is going to make platforms such as Mahalo and Wikiasearch serious competitors in the coming years. Mahalo’s new “Mahalo Follow” Firefox plugin is a step in the right direction to show people that Google is not necessarily the best way to find info that you’re searching for. Facebook is another example. So is Twitter. Or del.icio.us. There’s something to this follow concept.
So, where is search and finding heading in the future years? I’m not sure, but I do suspect that as more users of Google or Yahoo or MSN continue to become dissatisfied with the spam, arbitrage sites and over-marketization of search engine results more and more people will start to explore platforms such as Mahalo.
If you haven’t seen this piece by Chris Sherman on Search Engine Land, I highly recommend reading.
It’s long and involved, but well worth the thought tripping…
If I ever had to build a search engine, or more precisely, the interface of a search engine, this would be the team I would want to bring together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three years and speculating on what the search results page may look like in 2010, these are the names that immediately came to mind:
- Jakob Nielsen, the Web?s best-known usability guru
- Marissa Mayer, Google?s VP of user experience and interface design
- Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of Ask?s unique user experience
- Larry Cornett, the VP of search experience at Yahoo!
- Justin Osmer, Product Manager for Microsoft Live search
- Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Searchengineland and always thoughtful industry observer
- Greg Sterling, another industry analyst who always has interesting insights, particularly in the local and mobile world
- Danny Sullivan, the Go To Guy of search
What are your thoughts?
