Google doesn’t matter any more. A lot of people haven’t figured that out yet. There are experts talking about search engine optimization (SEO): designing your web site to make it easier for the search engines to index and find you. Reading different websites, forums and blogs specializing in SEO will teach you a number of tricks, tips and techniques to get your web site listed in the top search engine results.

The search engines have played into this game as well, giving webmasters instructions as to how to layout their pages and code their sites to fit what the search engines want.

All this has resulted in a lot of poor quality sites reaching the top positions in the search engines. It gets increasingly difficult to find the content you are looking for. And, with constant updates and changes, the site you found yesterday at #1 will be nowhere to be found today. You should have bookmarked it!

Before the Search Engines

Some of today’s Internet users may not even remember a time before search engines, but there was such a time. In those “ancient” days, we used Archie to search FTP sites or Veronica to search on Gopher. If we couldn’t find something, we’d ask on USENET, on our local FreeNet or on an area BBS.

Frequently we would have to rely on the advice of other people in finding the content we were seeking.

The Rise of the Search Engines

Later, we had search engines like WebCrawler, AltaVista, Lycos and Infoseek and directories like Yahoo! Then there was HotBot, AskJeeves, Northern Light and Google.

While people began using directories and search engines to find what they were looking for, during this time people still relied on recommendations from friends and other Internet users. Often, too, people would maintain their own lists of useful sites on their web sites. Some webmasters had better resource sites listed than some of the search engines and directories.

But, as the search engines–most notably Google–improved, people began relying on them more and more. Yahoo! was a longtime leader in organizing content, but Google relatively quickly pulled the rug out from under them.

Since then, Google has been quite aggressive in staying at the top and expanding its offerings and capabilities. People worry about the next update, and how it will affect their search engine positions. They worry about PageRank. They add NOFOLLOW tags to their sites to discourage Google from following links to sites to which they link. It really has gotten crazy.

As people have concentrated on getting well positioned in Google’s search engine results, they have neglected content. Google too seems to have neglected content. Quite frequently, and despite their routine “cleansings” and such, the top sites in the results are not the sites with the best and most useful content, but rather the sites with the best SEO. That’s good in the short term for those webmasters, but bad in the long term for users searching for quality content.

The Irrelevance of Google

For a company that claims a philosophy of “Don’t be evil,” they seem to practice a philosophy of selective blindness to the questionable things they do. Their efforts to digitize the world’s books–without the permission of their authors–has resulted in copyright disputes. There are concerns about the security risks posed by Google Earth. Google has faced criticism from both advertisers and publishers regarding how they handle click fraud. Not to mention accusations of censorship in Google’s appeasement of the government of China. Even the New York Times has suggested Google has lost its do no evil philosophy.

In the midst of all this, Google has been losing relevance. As people learn how difficult it is to find useful information in the search engines, they have turned once again to a more reliable resource: other people.

Post-Google

We are now seeing the beginning of the post-Google world. It is a world where Google will no longer matter. I’ll say it again, Google will no longer matter. I’m sure people will disagree with this, but there it is. The next “Google” is already in its prepubescent stages, just waiting for its next growth spurt to take the lead over its peers.

Here are the contenders:

del.icio.us is a bookmarking website where users can store and share bookmarks to websites or web pages they like. It is a part of Yahoo!

Digg is a community website where users “digg” stories they like. If a story gets enough “diggs,” it gets listed on the front page. While Digg currently is primarily focused on science and technology, it has been expanding into other categories.

reddit is a community website where users post links to web content. Users can rate the links, causing them to move up or down on reddit’s home page.

StumbleUpon is a browser plugin where users can find and rate content. StumbleUpon was purchased by eBay at the end of May 2007.

Technorati is a search engine for blogs with some community features.

There are also a number of less popular community-oriented websites similar to those listed above. Any of these sites have the potential to become the next Google.

No More Games?

While webmasters will no doubt continue to have to find a variety of ways to build an audience for their content, the next wave of Internet search has already begun. It’s becoming clearer now than it ever was: content is king. In the near future, success on the Internet will be less dependent on search engine results and more dependent on creating quality content that people will recommend to their friends and peers. Gone will be the days of mysterious algorithms, bad neighborhoods, linking penalties, supplemental pages and other terms that currently get SEO experts in a titter.

Google is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet. Long live the people!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 12:18 am and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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