SEO, Social Media & eCommerce Talk @RTMLWise

Just when I was hollering around that search engines may not look the same in a few days time, there is news that both Yahoo and Microsoft are likely to rev up their search engine initiative by a few notches. The news from Associated Press, San Francisco is that Yahoo is pruning its weblinks to provide more immediate gratification (not my words) and lure traffic away from market leader, Google Inc. Easier said than done. But the interesting part follows: Yahoo Inc. updated reporters on its two year effort to gain a better understanding of what users really want when they make certain requests. Ah……Eureka moment for me. This is what I have been blabbering about for a long time. The crucial words here are obviously ‘gain a better understanding of what users really want’.  This is the crux of entire exercise. These guys at Yahoo and Google may not be there yet but the intentions are clear – only those websites which are relevant and meaningful to the human mind will find a place among search engines. What happens to the poor guys who are banging away on their computer trying to fit in the right keywords and plugging into the right links? Thousands and thousands of websites will lose their ranking to be sure. What is the way out? Content and more content. That’s what I have been saying always – and presence in peer groups and forums.

But the bad news ( especially for the traditional SEO guys) does not end here. News agencies from New York reported today the following:

“In what is being called an attempt to counter Google, Microsoft Corp. is expected to reveal a new search engine publically at a technology conference in California.”

The news goes to say that the new version of search engine is expected to reduce the time taken by consumers (!!!!!) while clicking around web pages. This confirms my prognosis that search will not look anywhere like what it is today. Going back a few years, I recall that Microsoft didn’t care a damn about search engines. Then Google came along with their weird search engine and ……… But to tell the truth no one could imagine what would happen a few years down the line. The fight in those days was between proprietary IE of Microsoft and some other browsers, Netscape Navigator in particular-  I still have it somewhere in my hard disk.  The battle for browsers was won by IE but Microsoft lost the war to Google. It is therefore quite amusing for me to see Microsoft pitching in with their new search algorithm. I suppose they will start charging people per search or something like that. Or bundle search with their Operating system. Pardon me for the subtle jibes at Microsoft but to me search is all about open source and freedom. Today 65% of searches are through Google .MSN has a mere 5%. Ironically Internet Explorer still  has a share of over 80% of browser market.

So, what is the conclusion? Simple. Google is certainly not behind Yahoo or MSN. In fact it may be a few yards ahead of these two. There is an attempt to embed intelligence into search engines. This means that the rules of the game are going to change and change fast. This is a friendly warning to so called SEO specialists. Don’t create thousands of web pages which are only optimized for search engines. They will be useless in a few days time. If you really want to create something permanent, concentrate on your content and concentrate on your message – the rest will follow. Whatever algorithm you are going to encounter in future cannot ignore content. In fact, search engines will delve more and more into relevance and context of the content.

Many of you would be wondering why this fight over search engines? This is a great story which I would love to tell, but it is not the right time. Suffice to say that there is tons of money in search engines, so much money that even Microsoft cannot ignore it. But we are all gainers in this game of one up-man ship. As we move ahead, we will see many wonderful new concepts and ideas taking shape. We may see search engines which will look much different from what they are today. There is talk of the semantic web which will analyze data from the web and present in multiple ways. Lots of other exciting stuff happening.

But the message from all these developments is clear- if you want to create a website which will last for a while, make sure that you have relevant content. If you concentrate on keywords and link building alone, you are heading for trouble.