Search Is Growing Up And Ready For Broadband
By Jim Hedger, Contributing Writer, StepForth Search Engine Placement
Inc.
(http://www.stepforth.com/)
The past year saw immense growth in the search sector. Search
is bigger today than it was twelve months ago in every respect.
With the Internet becoming a larger part of people's lives and
broadband access becoming the norm around the world, 2004 was
the year that big business fully recognized the full impact of
search.
The search sector drives web-traffic by providing each web user
with the dynamic roadmaps and signposts that make the web usable.
This fact has finally become staggeringly obvious to anyone with
an interest in the web. That these roadmaps are self-generating
and are increasingly influenced by the interests of the
individual user makes search the most powerful medium in the
world. The largest of the search firms have found a stable
business model in paid contextually delivered advertising that
promotes growth while providing unequaled opportunities for
advertisers.
Sensing the enormous potentials, investors piled money into a
sector that was super-heated by interest surrounding Google's
IPO. Eighteen months of mega-money funding set the stage for
the influx of innovative features and tools each of the major
players introduced recently. The presence of so much money has
also sparked grassroots innovation seeing an increasing number
of formal start-ups and home-baked software design enthusiasts
produce an array of search related tools and products. Today,
nearly every digital product can be searched in one way or
another. Among the greatest developments of the year was the
expansion of search engine databases to include a variety of
file formats previously inaccessible to search engine spiders.
Investment in the growth of the search industry coincides with
vast improvements in US home Internet access options that until
recently acted as a long-term construction-zone on the
information super-highway.
Broadband access in the US has crossed the 50% mark. The
introduction of affordable high-speed access for US consumers
is one of the most important milestones in the development of
the Internet. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, as of October,
53% of US home Internet users have broadband access. While the
general behaviors of American Internet users have not yet
changed, the increasing number of high-speed users allows the
delivery of a wider array of information directly to home users.
>From interactive appliances to the replacement of traditional
print media to altering social interaction, broadband access
changes the way people do things. Now that the majority of
American Internet users have high-speed home access, the
Internet can start to meet much more of its actual potential.
For most of the western world, high-speed home access has been
a reality for several years. Legal bickering amongst the American
cable and telephone cabals had delayed introduction of affordable
services to most US consumers until this year. Now that the most
obvious digital divide between the US and the rest of the wired
world has been bridged, software and entertainment producers can
begin to exploit personal digital distribution of their products.
The adoption of high-speed access by US home users will have a
major, positive impact on the business of search as US users
will almost certainly imitate the actions of users in other
areas that have had broadband access for years.
The difference is measured in time. Whenever it is easier or
faster to find information on the Internet than it is to make
a phone call or send a fax, broadband users will always tend
towards using the Net. For most US home Internet users, it
could take between 45 - 90 seconds to connect to the net using
dial-up. With broadband, the connection between the Internet
and the home computer is never severed. Assuming most businesses
have useful websites, finding detailed information about a local
business or event is almost always faster online than on the
phone. Printed telephone directories will be used less, as will
telephones in general.
It won't be long before Hollywood and Brollywood deliver feature
films via the Internet directly to home consumers. We already
see the music industry moving towards digital distribution of
their products, following the lead of the online gaming industry
that has been widely enjoyed by users with high-speed access. As
a matter of fact, there are now several search tools that find
information from television shows by scanning the closed-caption
commentary included with many programs. Blinkx TV(beta) captures
and indexes video and audio streams directly from television and
radio broadcasters to make news, sports and entertainment clips
available. Microsoft XP Media Center
and TiVo products are both based on the assumption that
broadband connection will be the global standard.
Regardless of where the web is going and the role the search
sector is going to play in it, most individuals and businesses
rely on the free, organic listings. Those listings will remain
an important focus for the search engines as they will continue
to provide the primary interactive point between home-user and
the search engines. The impact of organic placements will
obviously be enhanced by the growth of the search sector however
once the user follows a link from the organic SERPs, they will
likely encounter a great deal of paid-advertising, everywhere
else they go. Repetition is the key to memory and competitive
advertisers should note the seemingly unlimited power of
paid-contextual advertising, especially for Google's AdWords
program. When users don't encounter AdWords, they almost
certainly encounter advertising from Overture, AskJeeves,
FindWhat/Espotting, and others as they all have their plans for
2005.
2005 is going to be an extremely intense year. If things are
quiet and peaceful in your universe over the next few weeks (and
here's hoping it is), take a break and read as much as you
possibly can. If you have the time to explore, mess around with
the new tools and features. Take some professional development
time to learn a bit about XML, RSS, FLASH and PHP. Ask your
family and friends about their search habits. You may be
surprised at the new sophistication that is shaping up. The
future, at least as the search sector is concerned is going to
be very friendly and increasingly informative. Now that the web
is going to become faster for its largest population, it is also
going to be increasingly interesting.
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Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing
expert based in Victoria BC. Jim works with a limited group of
clients and provides consultancy services to StepForth Search
Engine Placement (http://www.stepforth.com). He has worked as
an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share
his experience through interviews, articles and speaking
engagements. Other articles by Jim Hedger can be found at
http://news.stepforth.com
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