Back in the days of yore, when movie makers and early television producers used to portray the coming computer age, they dreamed anyone could type a question into a computer, watch some flashing lights for a while, then receive the correct answer to any question, as long as the question was in proper form. The classic 1957 movie, Desk Set, starring the even more classic Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in a bedroom farce set in a television network library based the entire premise of the movie on this concept.
The people at Google must be movie fans, because they have created a new search engine which is pretty close to doing just that – type in a key word, and you’ll receive a lot more extraneous information than just web sites to visit to find that information.
Google has been quietly gathering and banking information for more than two years, and has created results for searches which will be time-saving and enlightening for users.
It’s the web site owners which will now have to work harder and longer to make sure their sites come up properly in new Google searches, and maintain current page-ranking results.
Here’s how it will work for consumers: Someone searching for “Tom Clancy” would previously be provided with results which included his web site, probably web sites of book sellers which offer his works, sites with reviews of Mr. Clancy’s books, and references to sites like Wikipedia.org which have an entry for him.
Now, under the new Google system debuting over the new few months, the results showing will have all of that information, but will also include perhaps a list of his books, a list of movies made from his books, and a few tidbits about him. There will be a lot more information automatically displayed in addition to web site links.
That’s great for consumers, but, if Mr. Clancy is trying to drive traffic to his web site to talk about his latest book, or, to web sites of online and local book sellers where his books are sold, that information is going to be presented in a secondary manner.
In many cases, Google searches will provide direct answers to questions instead of links to web sites, as it does today.
The result could be web sites with search engine optimization as we know it today being bypassed by new Google searches and results display.
Now, more than ever, it will be important to have fully trained professionals create and maintain web sites and optimizing search opportunities. Google will have a lot to gain as a company for this new format, and, likely all of the other search engines will follow Google’s lead and create the same types of system. Those with the most to lose will be web site owners not having their web sites properly created and fine-tuned to stay relevant with Google’s advances.
Google stands to make much more revenue from this through associated advertising; web site owners stand to lose hits, visitors, and financial gains if they do not take immediate steps to brace their sites against these changes.
Web Marketing Pros, as always, stay on the cutting edge of Internet technology changes, and make sure you and your web site maintain the edge you need to be an industry leader.