The Sound of Content Ripping Free From Its Page
Yahoo’s announcement that they intend to introduce a different method of search, such that Yahoo will pull microformatted data out of a page and deliver it on Yahoo’s results instead of passing the searcher through to the target page should send a shiver through the minds of SEO experts and content producers alike. Let me explain it again: imagine search results that don’t encourage users to land on your website, but instead, they’ll get served at the search results page. Sweating yet?
From a user’s perspective, this is much more useful in certain situations. In the Blogspotting article, Stephen Baker uses the example of someone looking for restaurant info. Instead of getting links to all kinds of varying pages where the info is housed, you’ll get a simple, easy-to-read, useful collection of data that should help you get what you need.
From a content producer’s perspective, this requires you to make a lot of changes to your perception of what matters, and especially if you believe the value of your content is the site that houses it.
Advertising on the Page Pales
If someone’s seeking how-to videos on playing cello and you’ve got a cello podcast relying on a wrap around of Google Adsense for bandwidth and beer money, that video might now have “legs” to land on a search results page sans advertising. In all cases where you’ve built ads and affiliate programs all over your site, a search like the one Yahoo’s Prabhakar Raghavan is envisioning might leave your ads in the dust.
Good Content Will Be Found
On the other hand, if it benefits you or your organization to get your content out to more places, then as Mzinga’s Aaron Strout pointed out to me, this is a case where excellent content will suddenly have MORE visibility, and you’ll be heard by more folks. If you look at it another way, asking users/searchers to jump through hoops to connect with what they’re searching for doesn’t sound all that appealing, does it? You can watch a video pretty much anywhere. You can read anywhere. Content was built to be let loose, even if this means changing the business model a bit.
Producing great content and this new way of searching go hand in hand, but it also means that you have to consider tweaking your content for this new world. Include ways for people to get back to your main site, including links, directly IN the content you’re creating. For text, consider adding links back to your main site in each post. For audio, make sure to read out your URL at the end (maybe near the beginning, too) of every post. Ditto with video.
Get a Jump on the Competition
If you look at this as an opportunity, you can see all kinds of ways that having quality microcontent, using appropriate microformats would be a great way to deliver portable value that might catapult you ahead of other previous search efforts.
And, for the average user, it’s worth considering how you might interact in this new space, and think ahead on how you present YOUR brand in a world where semantic data might change the search game in a big way. ( Read more from Nova Spivak from Twine on how users should see this announcement).
So what do you think? Is your data ready? Are you?
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Comments
[…] shared that Yahoo is considering a new approach to serving up search results. He describes it as The Sound of Content Ripping Free From Its Page. I’m not sure it will be as dramatic as all that for a couple […]
Pretty much any time you are looking for a simple answer to a simple question you can get it on the first page of Google results. I use this as a way to get info all the time, and there must be a lot of other people out there doing the same thing.
Many people forget that there was a web before there were search engines. The SEs developed to help users navigate the web and, as the web changes, the way users find things will change.
Personalized search, human-powered search and ideas not yet conceived will replace search as we know it today.
Nothing stands still, certainly not in cyberspace. Adapt or die.
Chris,
Thank you for your concise and moving pitch for integrating microformats. I am very interested to see how this changes searches.
Direct example, for my retail store, I’m happy if folks find my address, no matter how they do it. They don’t have to visit my page to get it.
Chris - thanks for the mention! I guess it really is worth it to call you at 6:00 PM on a Friday when you advertise “call me now!” on Twitter.
Seriously though, I know this is a scary thought for many companies i.e. the dis-intermediation of content from corporate websites. As you point out in your post, however, if this is done right (and correctly branded) companies could benefit from much greater distribution IF they create good content.
Keep the good stuff coming!
Best,
Aaron (@astrout)
This goes a level deeper than disrupting site traffic and requiring us all to make our content, or brands, portable. It also seriously disrupts the third-party advertisers who buy inventory on most sites not because they care about the site’s brand — but because they count the site’s traffic.
If single web sites begin to pale because users are pulling data from RSS-type Yahoo feeds instead of visiting them, then advertisers on those single sites are going to see diminishing returns, and demand for online ads will falter. Who will want the “long tail” of vast ad networks if traffic is dying?
Let me explain another way: Yahoo, by limiting click-throughs to other sites, raises its own prominence as a portal. The only way you can thus get a clicks from Yahoo is by paying, so the demand for Yahoo’s ad inventory will rise.
Put it together and this may not be about providing more in-depth results for searchers at Yahoo. It may be Yahoo’s way of making its ad slots more attractive than those lousy competitors it has to pass traffic along to. Why give customers, and the advertisers chasing them, away when you can try to keep them all to yourself?
The irony is deep: A search engine stops searchers from searching further, and thus increases its value to advertisers searching for searchers.
This type of content delivery already seems to exist for some searches. For example, do a search on “when was beethoven born?” on Google and you’ll find the answer without ever leaving the search results.