The World and Future of Search Engines!

Assumptions on the Future of Search Engines.
Article posted on December 14, 2004.
Innovation in the world of search seems to come in waves with the
major search engine firms appearing to follow each other's lead in
the development of new products, tools and services. Witness today's
introduction of a desktop search/toolbar <http://toolbar.msn.com/desktop/results.aspx?FORM=PCHP&q=>
by MSN.
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Search engines are standardizing their services around the basic
business model of contextual ad delivery and introducing new products
and features designed to win the loyalty of new users and retain the
loyalty of old ones. The past year has been one of the most expansive
and interesting in the world of search since day one. Two major trends,
personalization and localization, combined with the competitive necessity
to gain users and advertisers provided the foundation for development
of desktop search applications and the immense number of toolbars
available now. The goal of all major search firms is to offer results
that are relevant to an individual searchers' profile in the least
steps possible. User adoption of toolbars and desktop search are major
steps in accomplishing that goal.
Advertising in the form of increasingly personalized, contextual
delivery is going to pay the bills, at least for the foreseeable future.
The Internet is about to under go its most massive growth spurt yet
and a large part of that growth will be driven by the unique search
patterns of every individual user of a search engine toolbar or desktop
search appliance. Without radically overstepping the boundaries of
the spirit of personal privacy laws, (which differ from nation to
nation), search engines have been gathering veritable gold mines of
information on every registered individual's searching habits. In
other words, your machine has a number and that number is you, or
at least it is representative of the most frequent users' search habits.
This expansion, at least as it relates to the world of search is
based on two fundamental premises.
The first and most important premise is that an individual's surfing
habits can determine user-specific information to be served to them.
Those folks who plant ad-ware and spyware through free software downloads
aren't the only ones interested in knowing where you've been going.
Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK, and every other search engine that releases
a toolbar, are also pretty keen on knowing what you are interested
in. It helps them send the right paid advertising to your search-browser,
thus increasing the likelihood of successful conversions for their
clients. There is a lot of business interest in delivery of advertising
information directly to individuals and thus, localization and personalization
go hand in hand with each other. It is almost totally unlikely that
the major search engines share your personal information with other
commercial interests, especially considering the competitive advantage
having such information gives them.
The second premise is that the Internet as we know it today will
expand into an electronic meta-verse which can be cataloged by the
search engines. Distribution of print media is a slowly dying business
and all other forms of information or entertainment can be recorded
or broadcast electronically. In the near future, information and entertainment
choices will be presented to consumers primarily through listings
based on search results. In many ways, this world already exists.
Barring any sudden disasters, consolidation and convergence will start
to wrap it up in easy to perceive packages within the next two years.
This emerging electronic meta-verse will include television programming,
music delivery, radio-format broadcasting, first-run movies and live
events. It will also include tens of millions of independent creations
as technology advances to allow anyone with (or without) talent to
produce and web-cast their own media. For an early experiment in merging
mediums through a search driven media (without ad-content), check
out www.zed.cbc.ca/. While this example has obvious commercial limitations,
it illustrates the general concept of electronic meta-media.
It's only a matter of time before search engines themselves present
increasingly specific directories of cultural fare, some of which
they will be producing themselves. In short time, those directories
will become spidered databases and those databases will become second
cousins to the search tools of today. The search driven nature of
the emerging meta-media universe offers a virtually limitless amount
of advertising space and will make the search firms (and those who
do business with, for, or on them) into the dominant players in the
advertising industry. It will also change the nature of the relationship
search engines currently have with those displaying paid-advertising
such as AdWords and Overture ads. If you thought 2004 was an interesting
year in the business of search, wait to see what's coming in the next
few years. By the time Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympics, the major
TV networks will have adapted.
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are a few more articles on search engine promotion. I recommended
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