What’s next in Search: The Crystal Ball Panel

Moderated by Gillian Meussig
Speakers:
Jeff Lancaster
Rob Garner
Larry Balin

Where is search going?

It’s changing, but it’s not going anywhere.

Mobile search is gonna blow up

Social Sites: Facebook on top. Myspace in the #2 spot isn’t even close.

Social media gaming (i.e. second life) is the “bleeding edge”

Why should we care about Social Media? Social media is more popular than pornography

GPS UBL Universal business listings submit your clients to this company and the’ll update your listings all over the interwebs.

Deep databases

Data mining using info we put out there all the time.

Privacy Issues:

What are governments doing? What will Search industry do? What are the ramifications of the “deep databases?’

• There needs to be an awakening; a realization about all the info available on us.
• Gap between the engines building a profile vs. what the users perceive.

Are we concerned that information about ourselves is out in the open? No one here is overly concerned.

Where do we draw the line between what we’ll put out there and what we’ll keep to ourselves?

Reality: Companies have been capturing our data for years and years. Super markets are the biggest gatherer of market information.

In Canada there are hearings going on right now ruling on privacy laws. the Right People should be in on that decision making.

The Promise

What is good about having all this info out there?

• The web is more mobile and we can get information quickly.
• Jumped the Queue: Location based targeting isn’t being leveraged as much as it could be.

Remarketing and behavioral targeting

We tend to be paranoid. We always think this stuff is insidious. However, deep databases allow marketers to target marketing, so we’ll get less spammy stuff. Better connections with potential customers.

Deep databases could reduce the clutter thrown at us by allowing marketers to focus.

Social Media in Search

How many people have enabled social on their Google profile? (a smattering of hands)

Google’s commitment to social media  is huge. Adding social to their ad products. There will be ways to have social ads to the content network.

What are the governments going to do about privacy issues? Legislation is on its way. No one knows what form it’ll take.

Apps? APPS!

In a world that’s going toward apps, the Apple platform becomes the new web. — Alex Langshur

People feel safer on an Apple platform.

People use apps more often than not. Most people here have 4-10 apps.

Apps are the gateway to data. Rather than go through search people use apps so that they can do their super-focused searches w/out misc. stuff.

Which platform should devs concentrate on when building apps? It depends on your demographic.

Palm is on the decline. Blackberry is still a big player. When deciding what to develop, make sure you know who you’re developing for (demographic)

Devs aren’t being given the opportunity to create apps for the Droid.

Windows 7 is coming out and most devs are .net devs.

What’s the next step?  Voice activated stuff? How far will voice activation go? Moving from text search to voice search.

Integration of apps is the future.

Censoring the Interwebs

Firewalls: China and AU

Means less competition in the Serps. (giggles)

What’s this mean for the countries that adopt it?  It’ll be economically detrimental. It’s not sustainable.

Interesting to find out if countries start charging tariffs for the “commodity” of their citizens’ marketing potential.

Bing/Yahoo becoming a major player in the search market? The merger will shore up the #2 spot.

Takeaways

Integration and combining of information are themes for the future of search.

Don’t forget about the core of your business.

Injection of social into the SERPs is a coming trend.

Everything is splintering off….everything is coming together depending on who was talking.

Do you have a promotion you want to promote? Here’s a bunch of freebee sites to use!

Recently, I was fortunate enough to make a presentation on writing web copy that users actually want to read to the SEMPO Meetup Group.  it was similar to the presentation I gave for the Pittsbugh SEO Group, but much less technical.

For a first presentation to a large number of people, I think it went pretty well, although I was pretty nervous in the beginning.  I’m going to post my power point with extensive notes very soon, and probably just make a blog post using those notes since I went through the trouble of writing them in the first place.

The other presentation that night was done by Stephan Mack and Dave Moser of EDMC.  They presented on the results of  a study that tested the value of keyword-rich anchor text links from profile pages in LinkedIn.com.   It was really interesting and it raised some good points and questions which I blogged about for Eyeflow.

Attending both the Pittsburgh SEO group and SEMPO group have been great experiences.  The SEMPO group seems to be more focused at educating new business owners and marketers who are unfamiliar with SEO in general whereas the Pittsburgh SEO group is definitely more focused towards SEOs who already know the basics. Both are incredibly helpful in their own ways.

I think it’s great that Pittsburgh has enough interest in the industry to support both kinds of groups, and that there is such a great free exchange of information at both. I’m also looking forward to next month!

I did a presentation on search engine friendly copywriting yesterday for Pittsburgh SEO Group along with Carlos Quesada who presented on the various uses and types of content management systems.

The meeting went really well. We had a few repeat attendees and free pizza from Vocelli’s. As usual Eyeflow Internet Marketing was the official host. The presentations were interesting (if I do say so myself.) We covered a lot of basic information that would be really interesting to any small business who is looking at building a online presence. Chris Hornak live blogged during most of the presentation, so everyone who couldn’t attend can still get something out of it. A full synopsis will be available on the the Pittsburghseogroup.com soon.

I think we also found our new home: the Productivity Center at Discover Organizing. The facilities were really nice and coffee and tea service were included. Pizza and Coffee at 7PM really hit the spot.

I’ll be uploading my presentation as soon as I tweak it a bit. Looking forward to the next meeting!

What Is a Search Engine?

Although this question seems incredibly elementary, I’m often surprised by the amount of people I come across who don’t know the difference between a search engine and a browser.

A search engine is an online entity that provides a list of the websites that are relevant to key words or phrases that users search for. Google, Yahoo and Bing (formerly MSN) are the three most popular Search Engines.

A browser, by the way, is the portal through which users can access the internet. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari are the three most popular browsers.

How do Search Engines Work?

Search Engines operate by indexing all of the web sites on the internet. They accomplish this monumental task by deploying automated programs called Robots or Spiders to crawl through websites and index the data on those websites.

Once these pages are indexed, they are stored away for future reference in databases. When a user types in a search query, the search engine runs through all of the pages in its data base and uses a proprietary algorithm to decide which of the billions of pages stored in the database are the most relevant to the keywords in the search query. The algorithm further sorts the pages into a list ordered by relevance, and serves that list to the searcher.

The Search Engine Algorithms

Each Search Engine has their own proprietary algorithm that they use to decide which pages are the most relevant to the terms users searched for. They take hundreds of aspects of the webpage into consdieration, and not all these aspects carry the same weight.

The search engines keep their algorithm a secret to keep people from falsely promoting their site. A lot of the research that Search Engine Optimizers do involves reverse engineering the algorithms to figure out how to rank websites higher.

The search engines do release tips and best practice guidelines designed to help the web masters learn how to make their sites compliant and friendly so as to attract attention and promote indexing.

Search Engine Priorities

The search engines have only one priority: getting the best and most relevant results for the user. As long as webmasters keep this firmly in mind, much confusion as to why the do what they do will be eliminated. Search engine optimization ideally helps you make your site the most powerful and relevant.

There are many who game the system and create false relevance. This is risky and will likely end up with sites getting banned, especially in a highly competitive industry.

As long as the end goal is to make a site exactly what the search engines want to see in order to get ranked highly, the risk of punishment is small.

This brand new site is currently undergoing so many changes that writing something of actual worth right now would be an almost completely futile effort.  However, I feel that an introduction of some sort is in order in case anyone accidentally stumbles in.

I am a Search Engine Optimization professional in Pittsburgh Pa, currently employed as a web copywriter and web analyst by Eyeflow Internet Marketing .  Writing is my specialty, but SEO in general has fascinated me ever since my initial foray into the industry four years ago while helping a friend get his breakdance video store started.

However, just as work does not define my entire life, neither will the subject of SEO dominate this blog completely.  Lucky viewers can look forward to posts about everything from orchid culture to home renovation.

Happy reading!