When I think about the future of SEO, I have to think first about the future of search. Almost immediately, I think you’ll agree that this will bring you to the question, “how does a search engine provide a better experience for the user?”
Starting from this point, let’s look at things from the standpoint of a company who wants to provide the best search service possible. Obviously, the best possible experience as a search user is finding exactly what you were looking for in some cases, while in others, it may be finding some hidden gem of information that you hadn’t previously considered.
Often, it occurs to me that when I’m making a query to Google, there’s probably some no name, perhaps even underground, site out there somewhere in cyberspace with exactly what I’m looking for, but, my chances of finding it via Google are probably slim to none.
Now, why would I think that? Well, for starters, competition. People are online to make money these days, and the more time or money you have to invest towards placing in searches for a given term, the better your chances. What about that guy or gal out there that just has some random tidbit of information on a particular topic that is absolutely groundbreaking? Where do they fall into that equation? Well, I would say that currently, their content going viral thanks to the super quality of their content, is really their only chance, if they’re not investing time or money in SEO, etc.
This really is a shame, since finding good content is the job of the search engine, and shouldn’t be the job of the search user. That’s why we’re at Google’s search engine, to find the best possible result for what we’re looking for! Well, in my opinion, given the size of this Earth and number of inhabitants here, there’s a lot more than 10 “top results” for a huge list of terms, and furthermore, in many cases, it’s all about who can jump through hoops the best, as to which 10 sites will be displayed on the infamous first page of results.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about directories. Isn’t that strange? It seems like going backwards, it seems counter-dynamic, however, look at the strong points of directory based results. First of all, you can see a lot more than 10 results per page, without the page running extremely long, or taking forever to load. Most directories just list the titles of the results for a given search anyway, and even if you included the description, there’s definitely a way to display more results in less space, resulting in a larger choice for the user.
That brings me to my next point. Why is choice bad? It’s as if Google is telling us, we want you to click the first result, it’s the best! If you think otherwise, well, you’re wrong. How many times is the first result of a search the only result you need? I would venture to put it like this: the first result is the only result I need, about as much as the first result is nowhere close to what I am looking for, at all.
Also, search engines are about discovering, right? So, what’s the harm in showing the user 50 results on a nicely laid out page and letting the user actually do some discovering?
For example, go do a search for sneakers. The first result is for the movie Sneakers, followed by SneakerHead. Get my drift? We’re all falling all over ourselves to rank #1 in Google, but look at how the end result actually plays out. The best sneaker marketplace on the net is still #2 to a motion picture result.
Now, I’ll say that I should have been more specific in my search, however, if I somehow became the owner of http://www.sneakers.com, I’m pretty sure I’d try to sell sneakers before I would make it an ode to that classic movie. Yet and still, you see the discrepancy.
Also, we have to consider things from the business side, from the black hat side, from the spam and scam side of things. The next big search system has to handle these issues better than Google. I will say that Google gets better over time, however, usually a big improvement also causes a huge amount of unrest from people who run sites that get tagged by their algorithm updates, for what would seem like no reason.
Also, isn’t diversity, competition, and freedom good? I’m not saying that unverified information should be the word of the day, such as taking Wikipedia at their word, on every post, however, taking Encyclopedia Britannica at their word for every post is just as dangerous.
As times change, people come up with interesting points of view on virtually any and every topic. Don’t they deserve a chance in the limelight?
This led me to an interesting thought. Consider a directory based search, that provides classifications on results, displayed in columnar format. The engine would identify the type of site the result was for, e.g., is it an authority site? Is it a trusted news source? Is it a personal blog? Is it an online store?
Then, results could be displayed in columnar format, as follows:
If you did a search for sneakers, you’d be looking at multiple columns of results, such as “Entertainment” with results for the film, “Sneakers,” a shopping column, with results for sneaker marketplaces, an informational column about the history of sneakers, and perhaps a personal blog column with results from bloggers talking about their latest activities involving sneakers.
This is a very general, and rough, example, but you can already see the value in the approach. Rather than seeing #1 result, IMDB’s page for “Sneakers” followed by a few sneaker marketplaces, you’ve got a page showing you everything that has to do with sneakers, from various angles, all with relevant information, and say, 10 choices in each column to choose from.
Now, that’s a page of search results that I really like. Also, it opens up the door to more competition. Even if you’re just a blogger out there, if you’ve got the most popular blog post that’s all about sneakers, you’ve got a chance to be heard, right next to Zappos, Converse, and IMDB, without someone having to do a specific search to come across the hidden gem that is YOUR perspective and experience on the topic at hand.
Of course, there could be many more columns, e.g. classifications of websites, so why not throw some check boxes next to the search box to select which classifications of websites you want to see results from. Only want marketplaces? Cool, just check the shopping box, and you’ll see 50 results of marketplaces for sneakers.
I know this can be achieved, in a way, with Google by using the specific tabs within search, but it’s nowhere close to this approach, and for things like Google’s shopping results, the site owners have to jump through some more hoops to get listed there, so for me, it’s pretty blah.
Also, I think a cool feature for search would be “random.” That’s right, random. Throw the wild card in there! Why? Well, for one, it’s more fun, and for two, you never know what you might find, depending on what it is you’re searching for. Sometimes, you just want to read the point of view of a lot of people on a given topic. What better way to do that, than by seeing random results on the topic, within a classification you choose? So, you could select “personal blogs” or it’s equivalent, and fire off a random search for sneakers. The results would be something you’d never come across without a lot of digging in Google today. You’d get the point of view of 50 random people talking about sneakers. While this might be useless in a lot of cases, what if you’re planning on selling sneakers and you want to know what your audience is talking about? Well, with this functionality, you could find that out a lot quicker, and discover more in depth information than is currently available in a few minutes of reading versus a few hours of searching and reading, as things are now.
So, who will the next big search engine be? Do you think they would be attracted towards approaches to search like these?
Digi Purpose 