The future of search
Bas van den Beld
Who am I?
Who am I?
One sheet about me• Search & social
strategy expert, blogger, trainer, speaker
• Founder Stateofsearch.com
• Radioshow
• International blogger• Searchengineland
• Searchenginewatch
Shameless Plug
The world and the web are changing
The search engines are changing
2009:
540x 365x
To understand the changes…
You must understand how the search engines “think”
If others say its good, they believe it
Search engines are like humans
Links!!
Social Impact
The problem search engines have
What is a user thinking? How to avoid abuse?
User intent
Eric Schmidt: “We Know Where You Are, We Know What You Like”
How do search engines think?
Search Engines are trying to understand what the user really wants
How do search engines think?
Hand out the information as fast as you can
User intent becomes user experience
Google dominates Europe
95%
97% 95%
97%97%94%90%94%
97%97%
96% 97%
97%
95% 99%98% 95%
59%
98%
Except here…
More than Google?
2nd largest search engine?
Guess who owns YouTube…
Guess who integrates YouTube…
1,8 + 1
How do users respond to this?
Users look at a page for max 1,8 second
Users only take 1 look
Top results are important
Google is looking at the user
User intent
User experience
From 2 to 3 columns
Instant
Instant keyboard
And it’s not about the films
Let’s take a closer look
Video is becoming more important
Research shows: images attract attention
Google is not always right…
Or are they…?
Google responses to location
Local results
News related articles can change in the top of the results
The placement of the News results can change, based on relevance
Results from your friends in your ‘social circle’
“Real time” becoming more important
All elements are shown within the result pages
Users are tempted to use the suggestions
Suggestions are based on number of searches
Personalized Search
Rankings might change from one person to another!
The effect
Other results are getting more attention
They are spending more time on the Google pages
Changing the way you think is hard but important
Dare to step away from your site
Dare to look in different directions
Listen to your audience
Infl
uen
ce
C
on
trol
Mu
ch
In
tere
st
Lit
tle
What other say ABOUT the brand
Channels
TVPrint / OOHWeb Sites - Email Partner SitesMobileDesktop Apps / WidgetsDistributed ContentOnline AdvertisingEvents
Brand CommunitiesContent AggregationWidgets – Social PlatformsUser Review SitesCollaboration – WikisSocial NetworksBlog NetworksIndividual Blogs
What the brand DOES and SAYS
Communicate with your potential visitor
Communicate where THEY are
Make sure it fits both you and your target audience
Go where your visitors go, but only if it fits
But HOW?
Optimise your images
Get into Google News
Make (video) sitemaps!
Twitter is not sacred but handy
But Twitter is being indexed by the engines…
Use images, both on and off your site
They will recognize you
Use YouTube
Blogs are well indexed and found
Get in touch with 'influentials'
If they talk about you they will find you
Use bloggers
New LCD TV launched, pre-informed bloggers
Optimised video’s
At the launch they dominated the result pages
Be creative
Think outside of the box
Finally Mobile
Year of the mobile
2007?
2008?
2009?
2010?
Mobile is not the future, its here already
Mobile Universal
Mobile Suggest
More integration
Video!
Search is more than Google
More than one site
Opportunities
User comes first
Questions?
www.stateofsearch.comwww.basvandenbeld.com
twitter.com/basvandenbeldtwitter.com/state_ofsearchlinkedin.com/basvandenbeld
