Search Marketing – Past, Present And Future…Search 3.0 And 4.0
Danny Sullivan, “The Godfather of Search”, served as conference chairperson for SMX West, a search marketing conference held in Santa Clara, CA from February 26-28, 2008. Sullivan also serves as Editor-in-Chief for SearchEngineLand.com. For more information on Danny or SMX West, please visit www.smxwest.com.
After years of no real dramatic evolution in search, the third generation has finally arrived and the fourth is on the way. Google calls the next generation of search Universal Search, or a more generic name as it’s now hit all the major search engines is "blended search." I have coined the developments Search 3.0 and soon to hit 4.0 – personal and social refinement. Here’s a snapshot of the history of search, the recent advancements and anticipated progression of the online marketing phenomenon called search marketing.
Search 1.0: Location, Frequency, & On-The-Page Ranking Criteria
In the good old days, around 1996 when the Web was a lot smaller, the big names in Web search used “crawlers” to automatically build listings. Those crawlers followed links across the Web, “copied” new pages and stored the millions of copied pages in an “index.” Millions? Today billions of pages are harvested.
The first generation of search, Search 1.0, was based on location and frequency of words on individual web pages. Using algorithms to sort through all the pages in the index, the “search engine” would return what a programmer thought the best pages would be relative to someone’s key word search. The system measured how often the word or words appeared in proportion to other words on the page and whether they appeared in key locations. Algorithms back then liked frequency and location.
Search 2.0: Looking At Links & Other Off-The-Page Criteria
It didn't take long for savvy search marketers to figure out that if the algorithm liked certain things, you should tailor content to suit. Thus, SEO was born -- search engine optimization, optimizing content for search engines. Location and frequency worked better in the trusted environments of libraries and controlled collections of documents. Applied to the open Web, where anyone could get anything listed, it started to fall apart.
Two guys by the names of Larry Page and Sergey Brin popularized a shift in search for all the major search engines. Page ranks and links were only part of the algorithm used to deliver results. They began analyzing off-the-page criteria as well such as clickthrough, domain age and general traffic to determine which pages were the best match for a search. Call it Search 2.0 and despite problems, it still works. But change was afoot and Search 3.0 began to take the stage.
Intermission: What Is Vertical Search?
Popularized by financial analysts more than search engines, the term "vertical" search refers to a search of specialized search engines. Rather than searching across the horizontal spectrum of the Web for a topic, which means hunting through billions of pages to find the relatively few updated pages with the fresh and relevant information you’re seeking, you can slice down into a specific area such as news, sports, home improvement or whatever for more tailored results.
Vertical search isn't new. However, it faces a huge challenge. Searchers simply don't know vertical search engines exist. No amount of tabs, buttons, drop-downs, you name it – got people to use them. Search engines would need to learn to push the right tabs for us behind the scenes something I termed, “invisible tabs” or Search 3.0.
Search 3.0: Blending Vertical Search Results
Finally this year, search's third generation really happened. While there had been some mixing of vertical and horizontal Web search results, the rollout of Google’s Universal Search was the first real blending of results. Web search listings still remain front and center, with vertical search blended around web search -- but vertical results are far more prominent.
It's not just Google, however. In June, Ask launched its Ask 3D interface that used the "Morph" algorithm to automatically decide which vertical search results to blend into the main page. Yes, In September, Microsoft relaunched with Search 3.0 features and in October, Yahoo finally announced Search 3.0 material it had been rolling out.
Search 3.0 is now fully engaged by all the major search engines and while the vertical search listings are still growing in how often they appear on some of the search engines and the amount of space they take up on the search page, the revolution has begun.
For search marketers, Search 3.0 presents new opportunities. There's less content in various vertical search engines, so the odds of ranking well naturally increase.
Additionally, much of the content in vertical search areas such as local and video seems poorly optimized. With just a little care, people should be able to see improvements – ones that may bring them to the first page of the "regular" search results.
Search 4.0 & Beyond
The next generation of search has been unleashed and a new one is on the horizon. In October 2005, Robert Scoble, blogger, technical evangelist and author wished for a "Search 3.0" world where search engines learned from users. Read/Write Web wrote about "Search 2.0" companies that were using "third generation" social features. It is coming soon.
The human/social element does have a role to play in search. It's the other long-expected evolution to hit: a fourth generation leap. It will monitor user input – where searchers visit, what they click on – and deliver personalized results. Google’s already making the change and the other major search engines have yet to push into it but this advancement in search is inevitable and will have powerful meaning for marketers. For the latest developments in search marketing visit www.searchengineland.com.
