I envy Google’s capacity to know what I want, sometimes even before I do. They have been exploring how to add more information directly to the maps displayed on search pages, knowing that, when I search for a hotel, I am likely to start by selecting the hotels on the Google map in the price range that I’m looking for. By bringing that information to me first, they immediately begin to influence my purchasing decision and have a chance to monetize it.
Most people want their profiles and/or products to be at the top of the search rankings—but that is fast becoming a primitive strategy. It really won’t do you any good to be on the first page of the search results if users click on Google’s map icon and go right to a competitor.
In addition, Google made a substantive change to their search algorithm on June 8th. They updated their underlying indexing system (called Google Caffeine) to provide “50% fresher” web results by giving greater prominence to blogs, tweets, real time news, forums, videos and recent web activities. They talk about this being the foundation for their future—it is clearly going to make things more complicated for traditional marketing.
So what does this mean? Your chance to move up in the search rankings has now become dependent on your capacity to use the power of your entire organization to provide current material in appealing formats. Your net strategy needs to incorporate the use of blogs and social media (not just search engine optimization alone) to remain competitive. But, even that won’t be enough very soon. Google, just like all the other search engines, is using “caffeine” to addict users and find new ways to monetize. Finding the exposure and clients you want for your business will be an ever-changing process and Ezults prides itself in staying on top of these technological advances.
