In the course of the week we at Mostwanteddomains.com, receive 50-100 offers on and occasionally run into some interesting people.
Last week I had email conversation with a guy named Gus.
So according to Gus, who claims to have some inside knowledge about Google’s algorithm and plans for how it will rank sites in the future, domains are in big trouble.
According to Gus, Google will start ranking sites based on the location of the searcher, so that direct match domains will no longer have preference when it comes to search results.
“Domains are not dead, its just that Google will no longer rank them based on searches. “
Says Gus
“Right now if you search “Bellevue trial attorney” you will see that bellevuetrialattorney.com is #1, if you search “Bellevue trial attorneys”, you will see that bellevuetrialattorneys.com is #1. “
“If you own the .com that matches the key words, your always #1.”
“Well that ends soon when “location” starts.”
“It’s Google’s new algorithm code. Its based on where you are, and it produces results within feet of where you actually are.”
“There is maybe 22 people in the world that know this.”
Well I guess there are more than 22 now.
Of course Google has been giving more and more location based search results for a while.
Search for “Best Buy” and a map will come up showing you where all the Best Buy stores are located closest to you.
Now whether Google will alter it’s search results to actually provide the top results based off of location, rather than other factors including direct match domains is interesting.
Using Gus’s example, if you type in “Bellevue trial attorney” and live in in close to Bellevue, it’s certainly not a stretch to think you will see search results based on your location with the top links showing up be attorney’s who are closest to you.
Let’s say you didn’t live in Bellevue. Lets say you lived in Seattle or even Florida but had a matter that needed handling in Bellevue would you still get search results based on the attorney’s closest to you or would the search default to current search results?
Let’s assume Gus is right and Google moves completely to a location based search results.
There are many other losers and caveats other than direct match domains if Google moved to an all location based search.
SEO
How many SEO guys are there out in the world that are going to lose a lot of work if Google simply starts ranking sites by the links closest to the user.
User Selection
It would seem pretty obvious that any such location based searched feature would be able to be turned off by the user.
Google isn’t the only source of search (although Google pretty consistently owns 66% of the search market)
Domains have a value well beyond just search
While search/seo drives the acquisition of many direct match domain names in many extensions, there are domains whose value is not dependent on search/seo.
Brandable domains, category killers and those domains that receive a large amount of type in traffic are just a few of the type of domains whose value would not be effected by a fundamental change in by Google to location based search results.
On the other hand if Google does in fact move to entirely location-based search, except for the other 22 people on earth, remember you heard it here first.
It could turn things on it’s head (literally.) Direct match domains may suffer, but it would also create a market for micro niche (local) domains. As with everything there are the pro’s and con’s to consider.
travelocity and expedia just got screwed 🙂
Seems like most people wouldn’t want it. Long tail searches are on the rise because peeps figured out how to do better searches. If you want a Atlantc City hotel you type that in…easy.
As you say, the big losers will be SEO guys, assuming that this happens.
Brandables and future trend names should be largely immune. For example, names (and their derivatives) like Graphene.com, Hologram.com (neither of which I own) really shouldn’t be affected by location-based results.
I’d assume that Geo names would be impacted – but maybe positively.
IMO generic domains may be impacted, but GEO names won’t be at all. If I’m looking for “Chicago attorneys” but I live in Florida, it wouldn’t make sense for Google to show me Florida attorney, because that wouldn’t be what I’m looking for and Google’s mission to provide the most relevant results. Of course, it’s another story if I’m searching for “lawyers” and, in this case, it would make much sense to provide a list of local lawyers.
Google does over 50 algorithm changes per week. These things are already integrated and with time will be integrated even deeper. If we know anything about search is that it’s immature to assume one single change will result in a doomsday scenario for type-in traffic.. it won’t.
Nevertheless, every serious business will want to own a fancy domain to represent them online, will want to buy the .com (from a domainer) when they currently have .net or .whatever, and will want to get a shorter name rather than a foot long D grade domain.
this is **fairly** common knowledge in the seo industry:
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-2012.html
I hope your readers noticed the Huge amount of SarcHasm in this post.
MHB –
So what youre saying is you didnt take the $100 Gus offered you for the domain.
I am sure Robert Cline is now peeing his pants.
Why would I go online if I was not looking for competative pricing or wide ranging product options ? Does Gus work for Yell ?
Sounds like its going to help my local business. I want local searches finding me when they search for products. As a domain investor, not as happy.
despite its market share, Google isn’t The Web
I can assure you that google has been changing it’s algorithm in that direction.
They started this by researching the query and reaction by there adword program. Just in the past few months they rolled out the option by not just providing ad placement by choice of user location, but also giving the option of showing your ad if your target geo location is mentioned in the search query. So before, if the user in chicago would search for a lawyer in Denver, your ad would not show up unless you describe exactly the ad keywords. Now you have the choice of matching the exact keyword placement and combining it with the geo location if the area or city is mentioned in the search query, no matter where the users location is.
So clearly there is a change going on. This also is a must be change because google has been running into issues regarding privacy. In several countries if a website is using google analytics you must change the original analytics code and ad a code to anonymize the visitors IP.
For anyone interested, the code is
_gaq.push([‘_gat._anonymizeIp’])
which is placed inside the analytics code.
If you don’t do this in countries affected by this privacy law and you are caught the fines which are charged are out of this world. Google has been under pressure and has to find a way to get around this issue, or they can’t keep there search results accurate.
I searched for ‘bananas’ but no local map came up.
In the long run, success is not based on what we’re afraid of, but what we’re not afraid to do.
“On the other hand if Google does in fact move to entirely location-based search, except for the other 22 people on earth, remember you heard it here first.”
Duely noted. 😉
As you have pretty well described, this changed seems to have already taken place as practically as it could. Anything more seems pretty forceful on google’s part.
Stupid concept. I love when people trying to buy a domain use a concept like this to try devalue a domain for Their benefit. Google is always changing their algo according to these guys
Btw I don’t know about anyone else but when I turn to the Google to find something it’s mostly because I have already bypassed the local guys (sorry shane) and I’m looking for savings online.
I’m going to share a secret with you guys , only 22 other people know about it.
Non of them work in top secret bunkers at google, but they all know what google is going to do.
All your popular sites with exact match domains are going obsolete. SEO is dead too.
Quick sell your domains to Gus now.
They sky is falling.
There is no sarcasm in this comment, just my balls
Google? I prefer Bing – simple, not crowded by other users, I doubt their algo’s have changed since inception, much cooler name – Bing!
Brandables rule! Just look at the end user purchase history for the top prices paid, mwd sales a case I’m point.
Top names will always bring in traffic, no matter what algorithm. Fact is, a algorithm can’t change what people type in there browser.
It is opinions (and knowledge) from folks like Gus and R.cOBERT .CoLINE (who was mentioned in an earlier comment) that ultimately point to intuitive, common use, generic and geotargeted .coms being the only one on the shelf because they DO NOT rely on SEO.
Let me use my BS in computer Science to throw a wrench in this concept.
Google knows where the searcher is.
Google does not know the physical location of the search results.
End of story.
Quite the opposite ! Search engines are in real trouble ! Generics will soar as more people move to the domain bar to direct search & companies realize the importance in generic marketing ! Generic email & web addresses – GenericGene
It may hurt SEO for local services a bit, and for products that people wouldn’t likely buy online, but realistically there aren’t that many products people don’t buy online these days. Amazon covers practically everything and I don’t see Google all of a sudden shutting them out to show some mom & pop store or department store down the street who charges twice as much for the same thing. And that doesn’t take into account things like software, domains, hosting, etc. that are only bought online.
It may change the landscape a little for certain kinds of domains, but not for all of them.
Sorry to tell you this JP.
It would scare the …. . out of you, if you realy knew what google is capable of and only because of all of us and what we and every other user on this planet feeds them.
The local business website will gain more exposure as they serve local audience. It makes sense when I look for electrician in Fairfax, it should provide me lists within Fairfax, not somewhere else.
I think it’s a smart move. Users will benefits to this change.
Normally, many of the people that bought generic domains spent a lot of money on them, and they are serious about their development. Therefore many have good or the best content. Anything that G does that slights them will slight the surfer.
It sounds to me if they do this than the search results would be less intuitive and not as good.
The only sure winner is Google. The rest will lose little by little as long as Google is the top dog
Aint gonna happen. Google wants to display the most relevant results tailored to the intent of the user. Sometimes that correlates with a specific location, and sometimes it doesn’t. They have been working on localization and geo related search for some time, but it will never default to entirely location based results. they would lose a ton of traffic to bing, Which is cooler anyway.
Ok Ok.
I re-read the article and I can confirm that it makes no sense whatsoever and Gus and his 22 mates have got it wrong.
Lets say I am in Miami and I type in NewYork Hotels, instead of giving me a list of Newyork Hotels, it gives me hotels closest to me in Miami.
Lets say I just type in hotels and instead of expedia hotels.com etc etc being on page one I only get hotels in Miami.
2 things:
1. People will switch to Bing at a rate of notts.
2. Advertisers will be pissed.
In relation to point 1, the vast majority of people use Google because the results are better than the competition, you can agree or disagree with this statement but its the truth.
In relation to point 2, the reason exact match domains rank well and always will is because Google itself assumes that people are looking for brands, they do not know if the person is looking for sites with information on “HowToMakeMyTinkyWinkyLarger” or if they are looking for the brand “HowToMakeMyTinkyWinkyLarger.Com”.
Lets see how long advertisers who have spent £Xm in SEO to get on page 1 for a term like Casino are going to pay £20 cpc ontop of this when their organic result is usurped by the 2 page site for the navahoe casino bar and grill down the road from the person searching for results.
Eventual Google will mess up their search results as they keep changing it, you always kill the thing you love. I doubt however that this will be the reason why.
JP–nobody uses BS as I do….
Domaining is like a soap opera gossip-gets tastier each day more BS each time someone post something full of “BullS”
rut row – I own hundreds of geo law names. I hope this does not come to pass.
Exact match domains as a ranking signal has been reducing in importance over the years, especially since the Panda update. I have a lot to say on this subject and will write a follow-up post on the blog.
this is not mere speculation. it is accurate.
you can see the changes going live already. e.g., have you noticed all access to blogger .com sites are 302’d to cctld’s? is this really necessary?
it’s not just gmail anymore. location detection is being applied to every google acquisition (err, “product”), regardless of size. accessing any google resource must tell google where you are. they even want to do this with their public dns, but it would require widespread adoption of changes to longstanding protocol.
but the web was not designed to operate this way. it is not an advertising network.
i’ve been watching what google is doing, all the changes they’ve been making, many of them just plain nonsensical (e.g. facebook paranoia), and i’m going to make the prediction in this blog post that google’s days are numbered. it will be fun to come look at this a few years from now. surely i’ll be wrong. or will i? the changes google is making are too much, at the wrong time, and all at once.
their database, like the the earlier 90’s crawls by inktomi and others, and like the 2000’s user submitted personal info stores, will survive indefinitely. the data has a life of its own.
how the data is used is another matter.
this company, imo, is hedging their bets wrong. what’s perplexing is that they are also “doubling down”. the problem with making so many sweeping changes, when business is good, is that their engineers, many of whom are well-educated, enough to lead companies themselves, will begin to question the leadership when business goes flat. and inevitably it will go flat, at least for a time. no matter what they do. but because they have made so many changes, causation will be attributed and the leadership will take the blame.
android and chrome are probably two of their smarter bets. but such work is not the true source of their income. and mobile phone software will not sustain a 10+ billion dollar company. too much competition.
in time, as the leadership comes under fire for lackluster performance, engineers will leave to start challenging companies, delivering the same crawl data (the real source of google’s success) in more appealing ways. a few will rise to the top. and the cycle begins anew.
certain types of domain names may be in trouble as google makes more changes… but that is the price ones pays for relying on seo. it’s always been that way. in the long view, seo is fool’s gold.
what’s more interesting about all the changes is that despite being squarely on top of their game, and on top of the web, for over 5 years, it may be google who is in trouble. just give it time.
and Jp is mostly correct.
In order for them to know this reliably, the data must be structured.
In general, the web is not structured data.
People have been grappling with this issue since the 90’s.
Does reliability matter when searching for listings of locally available products and services?
As a consumer, how much time do you want to spend chasing false leads?
Some might say Google’s attempts to solve this problem are “good enough”.
That assumes there are no better alternatives, e.g., the ones we use now: sources of structured data.
We shall see.
@Tom G and @Swami make some very good points.
My two cents about Google is this… know that adage? …If it aint broke, don’t fix it!
Google is either knowingly or un-knowingly destroying so many businesses, sooner or later it will all backfire! I started out and grew up with web 1.0 when google rolled out adsense and it was almost a dead certainty you’d make great conversions with your ad campaign. Now, google sends you spam! Be very careful prioritising your ad budget with google when there are so many options nowadays to scale and attract eyeballs. Did I hear Twitter? Let me explain… I seriously reckon, Twitter is a massive elephant in the room attracting 18,000 searches per second! Here’s a tip., check out TweetReach.com to see how to engage with prospects over the Twitter Platform.
Also, I strongly suggest you don’t dump your valuable domain assets… yes “ASSETS” everything on the web starts with a domain asset! It’s simply a question of quality and what Google does is merely a fraction of your asset. Here’s another tip… suppose I develop “TweetLawyers.com” using Twitter’s API, just like TweetDeck.com recently sold for $50M, why in the world would I care about what google does? I could do the same for CheapOil.co.uk as another example. The point is, what is the underlying market size, USP and strength of your Domain Asset? I still love Google, but they are about 5 notches down my priority list when it comes to advertising and marketing. If you rely solely or mostly on Google for your internet traffic, you are doomed! I’d be very worried about acquiring any website that derived most of it’s traffic through Google and not mostly organic, word of mouth, social media etc..
If your businesses mainly relies on Google, you probably don’t have a real business because Google owns you and can destroy you!
I re-read the article and I can confirm that it makes no sense whatsoever and Gus and his 22 mates have got it wrong.
Lets say I am in Miami and I type in NewYork Hotels, instead of giving me a list of Newyork Hotels, it gives me hotels closest to me in Miami.
Lets say I just type in hotels and instead of expedia hotels.com etc etc being on page one I only get hotels in Miami.
2 things:
1. People will switch to Bing at a rate of notts.
2. Advertisers will be pissed.
In relation to point 1, the vast majority of people use Google because the results are better than the competition, you can agree or disagree with this statement but its the truth.
In relation to point 2, the reason exact match domains rank well and always will is because Google itself assumes that people are looking for brands, they do not know if the person is looking for sites with information on “HowToMakeMyTinkyWinkyLarger” or if they are looking for the brand “HowToMakeMyTinkyWinkyLarger.Com”.
Lets see how long advertisers who have spent £Xm in SEO to get on page 1 for a term like Casino are going to pay £20 cpc ontop of this when their organic result is usurped by the 2 page site for the navahoe casino bar and grill down the road from the person searching for results.
Eventual Google will mess up their search results as they keep changing it, you always kill the thing you love. I doubt however that this will be the reason why.
Seriously guys, don’t we all have work to do. Google does not have the physical locations for the search results. Where do you think they are getting this information from?
If you need me to be more specific then to be more specific they only have it for a select few businesses that opt in to the local business program and provide it to google. Maybe google will give these guys preference in results? Wait they already do, and we are still Domaining. Note google only gives them preference when it makes sense to do so.
Question number 2, when somebody searches for “what is my ip address” which happens like 1 million times a month, what local website should google display first?
C’mon folks.
What will really happen? What is already happening. If you do a Geo-Search then google will factor its geo data provided by users into the equation. Makes sense, especially as it encourages more users to submit the geo data.
Google does not content scrape contact info off of sites for address. That would be unreliable and they are better than that.
I used to own a brick and mortar IT business and I opted into the google address program 8 years ago. I had to verify my address before they put me on the grid. They snail mailed me a pin number to do so.
MHB – Thanks for the post. So sad I read this post a day late, the discussions are probably all over.
JP?
I dunno what planet you are from. Google is littered with millions of addresses which it scrapes from websites, if you search for “swimming lessons” you’ll be shown several places/addresses/phone numbers which appear organically. Did Google verify each of those addresses manually? Never.
As for what this means for domains, yeah I don’t think it’s a real problem.
The fundamental formula of SEO will always be the same, backlinks and content. A Domain name will always have dramatic weight, Matt Cutts said it back in 2007 “Domain Names are the primary way of routing the internet” if a domain is descriptive, it helps give the the search engine an idea of wat is on the site (Primary way of routing).
If people don’t adapt and get fb/twitter pages (As useless as they are, but unfortunately neccessary) then they only have themselves to blame for not ranking well with a nice generic domain. Since social media are also backlinks (the fundamental system which PR was founded on and still operates on).
Really dunno why people have such a fearful mentality in the domain world, if people actually took the time to see how descriptive Generic Domains that are well built come out of nowhere and rank #1 such as CookingGames.com – You’d see that domains are and for quite a while will still be the Silver Bullet of SEO if used correctly.
The biggest threat to domains in the years ahead is also ironically an even bigger threat to Google’s search division itself.
Computer processing and storage technology on nano levels is advancing so rapidly that soon smartphones will be thousands of times more powerful than they are already and will become the primary “computing” and “information search” devices for everyone everywhere.
The threat is “search assistant” software like Apple’s Siri. As that kind of software evolves in precision, power and reach, and migrates to the Android platform and then all other computing platforms, both domains and Google’s search as well will become dramatically less useful and necessary for Internet users to find information. Users don’t have to type in anything when they have software like Siri doing the search work for them. Siri doesn’t need to know a domain name to know where the information is that the user is seeking. It doesn’t need Google to know the link to that information either.
At the end of the day, domains, at their core, are just “vanity” navigation signs to server locations housing content. At the end of the day, Google search is just a directory of links to server locations housing content. At the beginning of the day it always has been and will always be about CONTENT. Content is the true King of the Internet. Not domains. And not Google.
The day will come when our smartphone assistant will be so powerful, intelligent, real and human like it will be as incredible as having the greatest smartest personal assistant one could ever find or ask for and in the palm of our hand ready to find whatever we want to know, see or hear 24/7 in the blink of an eye.
Even traditional websites will become a thing of the past too. In the future your personal assistant will fetch information and then create a website on the fly the way YOU like to see things, in your preferred customized style of layout and colors, not how a designer “makes” you view it according to their style.
As domain investors, this coming technology revolution will be our RIP day. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, nor next year, but it will happen and probably some time within the next 10 to 20 years at most. So we still have many years of prosperity ahead, but if there is one thing certain in business and in nature, it’s the certainty that all things have a beginning and an end, and nothing lasts forever.
LOL how ironic.
Just saw this new feature Facebook introduced today. Facebook Lists.
This is what I’m talking about in my post above. This shows it’s not just smartphones, that domain investors and Google have to worry about in the future. It’s also ideas like Facebook is doing. Bringing information TO YOU instead of you having to search for it on websites.
Here’s the news release:
http://newsroom.fb.com/Announcements/Introducing-Interest-Lists-109.aspx
Here’s the Facebook link to create your personalized lists.
https://www.facebook.com/addlist
Might need to adjust that 10 to 20 year window of prosperity years remaining down to 5 to 10 years now. LOL
@Kevin
With all due respect Kevin you sound rather cynical. I’m one of those people who believe in the Singularity, like Ray Kurzweil & Co. However I think you’re probably jumping the gun if you really believe in just a few years it’s RIP for Domains. That’s a bit like saying the property you live, or real estate in general is no longer an essential need for human kind.
Even if we could colonised mars within the next 10 years, I’d want to acquire domain place holders or real estate on mars lol! The point i’m making is, the internet as long as it exists, will always have assigned “placeholders” which we call domains, like land and real estate in conventional terms. It is a commercial imperative in a capitalist world period.
Domains are never going away, unless you destroy the entire internet! Funny thing is, Google could disappear as a business entity perhaps or go down due to a serious cyber attack or something…. what will people do then? Oh! I know!… they’ll simply try to search for your domain directly… right?
@ Robert
Just being a realist.
I also didn’t say domains will disappear off the Internet landscape. I said they’ll be less useful and less necessary. Behind every domain is a numeric IP address and that is all information fetchers like Siri will need and be using in the future.
Also here is an example of what the future holds that I just saw as a new feature Facebook annouced today.
Facebook Lists
News Release:
http://newsroom.fb.com/Announcements/Introducing-Interest-Lists-109.aspx
Link To Create Your Lists:
https://www.facebook.com/addlist
This is the kind of thing we need to worry about and Google needs to worry about as well. So instead of searching for content and going to websites, brilliant companies like Facebook bringing content to you directly.
With Facebook Lists now you can rapidly create customized separate topic of interest feeds on your FB panel and FB has great informative topic content producers already sourced for you in the topic selections.
This is a great idea on FB’s part and will add more time people spend on Facebook instead of going out to sites directly for info and entertainment. And less time people will spend searching for it via Google.
While not diminishing the Big G’s obvious HUGE importance right now, it will not always be that way. The domain name system and protocols will be in existence long after G has been broken up, taken over, risen to heaven or whatever.
@ThomasPiper
Sure google has lots of scraped data. That’s the bases of their entire index. But do they look at the scraped data as more than just “content” I hope not. Ever hear the saying you should believe everything you read on the web? I think google is smart enough not to believe it. If not then problem solved, easy to put up a different contact page on every website for every geographic region that could conceivable be serviced. Then goole will be fighting that spam.
Scraped content is content, it’s not trustworthy regarding authoratarively telling folks that something is close to them. Google just provides search results based on keyword appearances in scraped content. If you have however confirmed with then your address as a google local business via snail mail pin verification then google has grounds to tell a searcher where something is.
Your example reminds me of early gps systems that based their directions solely on the govmnt gps data of where all the streets are. The old gpses had people making u-turns across concrete islands. Thus companies were born that made better gps data. This was a problem that could be tackled. The physical address for every website in the whole world, hmmm that’s a bit larger scale.
This is what google tells me on my iphone:
“http://www.google.com”
Would Like To Use Your
Current Location
Don’t Allow OK
So basically google is giving you an option how you want to search…and most people like myself usually click on OK…because Current Location based search is what most people are looking for anyway…so GOOGLE is moving in the correct direction…A+++++
Google is not here to satisfy you little angry domainers…Google makes positive changes for the MASS public…so it’s a great change for 99.999999% people in the world!
as the search space is mature the area of growing search is mobile…android and iphone..its exploding! Then we have the fb ipo coming out and will shake things up….
so google has to implement counter measures to expand and protect its turf..location based search.The adoption period and user experience will effect how it works.
As I have stated many times google is the enemy reguardless of what frank states..google does not benefit domainers in any way, shape or form…Google will capture more and more of the mobile market and continue to seperate itself from bing!
If Google is at the center of your Website or Domain strategy, you are doomed… it’s that simple!
Think like linkedin, twitter, facebook and thousands of successful websites who couldn’t care even if Google exists. All those companies did not build their brands on Google.
kevin you are on the right track.
but until users learn how to harness that power and storage capacity, it will not be a level playing field. database “owners” will still try to extract rents, even when users could have local copies of the databases they need.
the touch screen is not going teach the user much. neither is voice recognition. or gestures. or eye tracking. those result in a game of manipulation. because i.t. companies cannot be trusted. physical buttons are still the fastest and most precise way to control the computer. e.g., the buttons on a keyboard. we call them keys. you press a button and you get an expected result. simple.
if you can see past domain names as vanity labels, shortcuts, bookmarks, whetever you want to call them, perhaps you will eventually come to the question of ip addresses. should every user have a reachable ip address? why or why not? it’s more common in some countries than others for isp’s to give their users reachable ip’s with basic service.
in the u.s.a, it’s rare.
with a reachable ip address many things become possible for users. serious innovation that would make today’s “web apps” look silly. smarter users. the internet could become more decentralised, more robust and resilient, and more true to its roots: end to end. and the concentrated manipulative power of companies like apple, facebook and google decreases. this is probably inevitable since to achieve voip usable by the masses, more decentralisation will be necessary. we must move more toward end to end, and away from centralisation gimmicks like “the cloud”.
like domain names, the dissemination of ip addresses is a system with serious flaws and inequities that remain unaddressed year after year. few people really pay attention it. and there’s no shortage of unethical players to be found among those who do.
the addresses cost almost nothing to create and maintain. in many cases large companies acquired blocks of millions of them for free.
but despite their potential usefulness to users today, these recipients only use a small fraction of their blocks. despite the gross inefficiency of this situation, they will not share them. it is isp’s who obtain smaller blocks and resell the addresses in their blocks for profit.
this is classic artificial scarcity. the seed for a new market. selling network numbers for a network you do not own.
imagine if someone tried to sell you a phone number yet they had no affiliation to the phone company. you might tell them to take a hike.
the internet is a huge co-op network. if people do not cooperate the network gets weaker.
the rise of “social networking” is just the beginning. it’s plain to see users want to connect with each other more than they want to connect to apple, google, twitter or facebook. those companies are just acting as conduits. they have reachable ip addresses. but in almost all cases they lack any real connection to users. they are strangers. but they are not like the phone company. they are like that guy who tried to sell you a phone number.
when there are no other options, a user might actually accept his offer. even though she knows better.
alas, friends don’t know how to connect with each other over the internet without some third party conduit. at least one friend needs a reachable ip address for connection be possible. so in terms of the most important thing to have to get the most from the internet, ip addresses trump domain names by a longshot.
voip may bring this issue to the foreground.
More than a decade has come and gone, and Google is still all about web sites and making choices for each one of us that current technology would allow us to make for ourselves. Only 20% of all global data is currently available online. The other 80% is in the form of unstructured information:
http://www.squidoo.com/UnstructuredInformation
Web sites and domain names will always have a place on the Internet, but with IBM developed technology, Google could loosen it’s stranglehold on the information it spoon feeds us and let us do some of the heavy lifting ourselves. With cutting edge, user friendly data mining tools, we could each create our own version of the Internet and bring personal, context based search to levels that are currently unimaginable. However, that would require Google giving up a significant amount of control, and historically, gatekeepers are reluctant to offer the “masses” a seat at the table.
Sooner or later, a major player will bring the other 80% of global data on board and provide us with the opportunity to upload, organize and sift through it in ways that are not possible today. If Google chooses not to lead the way, it may one day find itself in the middle of the pack – playing catch-up.
right on, SDM.
but i think “user-friendly”, as people have come to understand it, for what you describe is a red herring.
you could learn to understand the unix command line and the shell and have your cake *today*, and eat it too. you can do some pretty heavy lifting and sifting without spending any more money than you already have on your gadgets and internet connection.
the price is simply the time and effort to learn.
you don’t have to become an expert. learning a few abstractions can take you a long way. you must decide whether you believe it’s worth it. consider this: know any geeks who are wealthy?
no “major player” will ever tell you to learn the basics (e.g. ibm’s os’s, vms or unix). their business relies on you wanting someone else to “do it for you” everytime you are faced with a computing task. and we are faced with computing tasks constantly each and every day. gadgets everywhere, with computers inside all of them.
using a computer is not like using an automobile. it’s a very malleable machine. it’s made largely from intellectual energy. anyone can “pop the hood” and start tinkering, to immediate benefit. and they should. it’s not a mindless gadget. as an ibm ceo once said: think.
but the “major players” do not want you to believe this. they want you to see the computer as you do an automobile. they want you to believe there are “mechanics”. and only mechanics should tinker.
and this holds everyone back, it keeps forward progress slow, at everyone’s expense, for the benefit of those companies.
Hi everyone!
I thought i’d share the following article referencing the above discussion in this excellent thread re; Google. Businesses are already raising grave concerns about the next direction google is taking, by limiting search results to only “One” as opposed to many results on a page as you currently see it. So, google will only show the most relevant results as they perceive it!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9149141/Why-Google-searchs-overhaul-will-matter-to-businesses.html
This could actually make “keyword’ domain names even more important and extremely valuable, because a lot of businesses may no longer receive traffic dependancy and SEO as they have come to rely on. This suggests you will need bigger budgets to stay competitive or simply own the direct domain keyword in my opinion. it feels like Google is trying to build a walled garden of sorts, similar to Apple and Facebook… hmmm.
Read the article yourselves and the comments are very interesting! Kindly share your thoughts here.
Cheers!