The Evolution Of Search: Neolithic Search Goes Social
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 12 of April , 2007 at 2:45 pm
Browsing the blogs has its benefits. You read some interesting things.
As most of you well know, I’m a big fan of social marketing and social optimization. But this mode of Internet marketing is relatively new. Recently, I saw an interesting little monologue on how we’ve arrived at our current state of search. I thought I’d chime in.
The blog was a Scotland SEO blog and I’m glad I found it. Near the end of this blogger’s analysis was this paragraph:
This new emergence in search is slowly giving rise to a new form of optimization called social optimization. The idea is to make your article, blog, web page, etc. valuable according to ideas or concepts rather than specific keywords. Anyone familiar with those concepts can vote that article blog valuable or not valuable according to whether or not it offers anything of value to the concept - even if it doesn’t use specific keywords related to that concept. This way, the community, or a community, can decide by consensus or “majority” vote whether or not a particular piece of content is worth the ranking it receives.
I’d like to expand on that a bit.
Search began in the Web’s infancy as Net browsers searching for specific information went to online directories like Yahoo and Excite to find information cataloged in categories (DMOZ didn’t come along until 1998). Those categories existed to make finding the information easier. But the catch was that webmasters would select the category most appropriate for their website. This made search somewhat difficult as a webmaster’s idea of appropriate and relevant may not have coincided with a searcher’s idea of appropriate and relevant. The result was inefficiency in the search criteria. Still, it was better than nothing at all.
It didn’t take long for search engines like Webcrawler to arrive on the scene and offer a better way to find information. Webcrawler was the first search engine to crawl the Web and index all the information on each web page that it found, much like all the search engines do today but in a more primitive way. Between 1994 and 1998, several more search engines arrived on the scene - Lycos, Alta Vista, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, and Google - and a small war for domination began. With each new search engine to join the fray, there was a small improvement in search technology. Web denizens had discovered virtual fire.
Google introduced the concept of back links for search rankings. Before then, search was primarily keyword related. Metatags played a big part in rankings at most search engines. Now, just about all the search engines emphasize inbound links and keywords, primarily within the text on your web pages with less emphasis on meta tags. My, how search has changed!
It continues to change and will likely continue to change even more as the Internet grows. One of the areas where it will grow, and is currently branching out into, is social search, or social optimization. The idea is that users will determine the importance of the elements that rank web pages - not webmasters and not search engines that play God with the Web universe. End users. You and me. That guy in Bangkok who has developed an interest in box kites since reading your blog post on it last week.
Instead of keywords, social media optimization involves tags. Tags are like keywords but there is one distinct difference. The end user decides what the tag reference will be. In some cases, the tag is decided upon by consensus. That is, the webmaster offers his suggestions, the social media site provides its input, and the user makes the final decision. Other users chime in and agree or disagree. It all works out in the wash and at the end of the day the tally is made. You make the final cut or you don’t, and you can’t blame it on some vaguely defined algorithm. Instead, you can blame the vaguely defined community. Welcome to social media optimization.
That’s what is coming. We’re not there yet. But we’re close. The question is, what will it take to get us there? Popularity. The same thing that gave Google rise in the current search model. It will take people like you and me and that dude in Bangkok actually using the services that make social optimization possible. When we all figure out where to go to do our surfing and just how we will surf the waves, that’s when the beach will get busy. Until then, enjoy the Googling.
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