Search, the way you first experienced it, is dead.
Search, the way you do it now, has never been more effective at delivering the results you’re looking for.
Search, as a necessary focus for your brand, has never been more important.
How has search changed?
As you first experienced search, it was probably equivalent to Google in your mind. Oh sure, some of us (like me) learned searching pre-Google. My early experience with Google search was to use it to match the keyword query to an existing webpage, using its Page Rank methodology.
Google’s Page Rank was based on a widespread manual review process to determine how authoritative a website’s content would be. More about Page Rank.
In time, Google began finding ways to keep the searcher in the Google ecosystem of products, each of them based on refining the usability of search to the user.
Today, with Google Answers and more information being available in the search results, it’s easy to make the case that Google search doesn’t deliver the same quality of traffic it used to for most small site owners.
It’s past time to reconsider what search really is, at a higher level.
Go Deeper:
It’s worth looking at some metaphorical old-school analog concepts to explain:
The entire human body is replaced every seven years . That’s not medically true even though it’s a widely-held belief. Some cells are replaced constantly (like skin cells or stomach lining) and others (such as cells that make up the central core of the lens of the eye) may stay the same for an entire lifetime.
Technologists who obsess over the use of search in their products (every app you use probably has a search feature) have data points at their disposal such as the time someone spends, how often they click, page engagement, and so on. They might use a combination of recency, location, or popularity to deliver those results. The belief persists that search = Google without the awareness of the individual tests and experiments all search products use to improve their utility.
Moore’s Law . Since 1965, when Gordon Moore stated that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years, it’s generally accepted to be true.
I think it’s possibly an interesting metaphor to consider what that kind of technical growth looks like in the search landscape. Lots more content, more websites, more tools offering more specialized search (privacy or real-time content). Just as the power of transistors and microchips is driven by research and development dollars to constantly improve, the effectiveness of search is driven by the same competitive spirit.
The “Man” is watching . The idea that our online actions are being tracked and information used without our consent is widespread. Since Google changed their reporting to make keyword data private in 2013, it’s been difficult for SEO’s to track their work through to sales and leads. Generally speaking, searchers are happy to know that their searches are private because their searches are personal.
Those of us in the business for more than 10 years think of search as something that used to show direct return on investment (ROI), but not any more, and consider search to be dead. With the fragmentation in search, it’s really the owner of the platform who has the best information, not the marketer or small business owner. And there’s no real dispute that they are watching, harvesting value, and innovating even more.
Bell Telephone . You don’t have to be old to remember the breakup of Bell Telephone, but it helps. Bell Labs made huge innovations in telecommunications and these developments helped create the infrastructure we know today. But the federal government has an interest in not letting a single company monopolize an industry, so Bell was broken up into smaller companies.
Some think Google is heading for its own kind of breakup, fragmenting the digital marketing landscape. It’s understood that ads in search are a big driver for Google revenue and has funded the development of a large ecosystem of tools.
The future is unknown but we accept that the need for someone to search for something is not going away; it’s going to be fragmented across other tools and services. To limit our understanding of search to what Google does is comparable to our understanding of the wired phone as the way we make calls.
What’s your price? What’s your product? In the analog era, we knew how to ask shortcut questions to get the information we really wanted. A business owner who could not answer these questions was immediately not considered credible. Professions with low credibility in these areas included car salesmen, lawyers, and audio equipment retailers. There was always an upsell and never the kind of transparency the buyers wanted.
Well, you can add web design and search engine optimization to that list; it has suffered from a credibility gap for my entire career. But just like you probably need a car some day, you will probably also need someone to provide digital marketing services. It’s why are prices are published in full transparency, unlike our competition.
I’m just old-school like that.
And SEARCH IS NOT DEAD.
Big Picture Takeaway
Google will continue to lose relevance for specific search needs, although it will dominate as long as Gmail, Calendar, and Drive tools are widely adopted.
Innovation in new search ranking factors will continue to focus the searcher experience, not delivering qualified leads to your site; a creative agency will need to do that.
The knowledge the Search & Convert team has put together can guide you through the landscape of options.
The Bottom Line
Search & Convert is a full-service digital marketing agency. We are partners to our clients’ success, but that partnership is earned. Our depth of knowledge is unparalleled in the industry. But it’s not all about the dollars. Our passion is working on problems worth solving for interesting projects. Bring us your creative challenges and watch us construct great solutions.
