Have you noticed anything different about your Google search results lately?
If you’re like most people you probably haven’t? But if you’re a little more astute, you’ve probalby noticed that your results are getting lower and lower on the page.
Paid ads and answers all come before the list of websites you might find useful to your query. If you’re like me and use Google to search for just about everything under the sun 100x a day (including using it as spell check), this is a good thing. I’m able to take in more information faster and with less clicks. Google is constantly working on dozens of projects that, mostly, make the user experience pleasant and inviting. It may seem counter productive to people who like to keep people on their site to show user engagement and increased page views but for Google, the more people that can quickly find an answer the more likely they are to use the service again.
What does that mean for the rest of us? Well, I don’t really know and it’s probably too early to tell. With Google’s constantly changing algorithms and introduction of “Google Search, Plus Your World” the world of search is really taking on a new shape. Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt has been quoted as saying:
“…we’re trying to move from answers that are link-based to answers that are algorithmically based, where we can actually compute the right answer. And we now have enough artificial intelligence technology and enough scale and so forth that we can, for example, give you — literally compute the right answer.”
-Eric Schmidt, D: All Things Digital conference June 2011 [Bonus: Video of the D9 interview]
At one point in time, search used to be the great equalizer, one company versus another for rank. Today we face a new challenge that includes paid advertisement, sponsored links, paid and organic SEO, customized results, location based results and social integration. Peter Yard, CTO for CBS Interactive and CNET contributor says:
“…Google’s famed PageRank algorithm carries less and less weight these days, since fresh news and results inherently don’t have as many inbound links as older content. (If it helps, you can think of PageRank as a kind of paleo-social search–just one that moves way too slowly for the modern Web.)”
-Peter Yard – Why Google is ditching search, CNET
The more our world continues to conform to our social sphere, the harder we will have to work to find things outside the boundaries being built by integrated services.