NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Search engines are dying
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Search engines are dying
Billy Newsom (smartweb_at_flash.net)
Tue, 11 Nov 1997 02:06:03 -0600
richard hoy <rhoy_at_tenagra.com> wrote:
>I'm beginning to believe that search engines are a dead-end technology and
>fretting over where your site comes up is a big waste of time. I'm now
>advising clients that we create good META tags, submit the site and then
>forget it.
[lossy compression]
>I base this newfound philosophy on a couple of things. First, I've noticed
>on the sites we manage that the percent of traffic from search engines
>How can such an unstable system survive? Moreover, how can you ever hope
to
>be on top of it for long?
>
>So in closing, I submit that search engines are dying. In fact, I would
say
>they are dead already and just don't know it yet - gone the way of the
>reciprocal link exchange and the "you have a cool page" award as an
>effective promotional tool. A victim of their own success.
>
>So what do you guys think?
I think you're basing your "philosophy" which I call "misconception" on the
fact that search engines do not greatly impact a 'large' website's traffic.
I would instead use your data, analyze it correctly, and conclude that
1. search engines are what start a website on the path toward mass appeal.
2. after search engine impact has been fully realized, other means of
promotion will make or break a website.
I see a good future for my website. Up until now, a large percentage of my
site's traffic has been from search engines and directories (Yahoo and
InfoSeek). However to continue my site's growth, it is becoming obvious
that "free" (read passive) promotion must take a back seat to the active
promtion. Traffic is beginning to stagnate, and I need to begin
advertising -- perhaps agressively.
However, your conclusions were entirely in error. A small website (one
which gets <250,000 impressions per month) will often attribute a good
amount of its traffic to search engines and Yahoo! For these sites, search
engines will NEVER DIE! Never is a long time, but I'm convinced it
applies. If you consider medium to large sites like your year2000 or my
http://www.motherboards.org/ you will of course see that magazine
articles, word of mouth, dedicated users, newsgroups, and link sites
dominate AltaVista/Excite/InfoSeek by a large margin. It's not that the
search engines are inferior or dead, it's simply that large sites are
freaking large! However, given the content of my site I would never want
to imagine a day in which AltaVista, Excite, or Lycos up and died. My
stats would be noticiably different on that day. But I doubt Microsoft,
Netscape, or Playboy would notice the difference.
Dead? No. Could you infer that search engines are insignificant for sites
with >1,000,000 impressions per month? Well, I'd say "probably." Richard,
I'm not sure how many websites fit into this category, but I would guess
that the number is in the thousands. Considering the millions of websites
on the Internet, I must conclude that your conclusions are clearly wrong
for more than 99% of the Internet community.
Calling AltaVista (and its competition) dead is like saying that the loss
of Hong Kong to China ended the British empire or the East India India
Company. The sun still never sets on the British empire (which possessed
HK), nor has the East India Company (which founded HK) ceased to exist. I
submit that the sun will never set on the search engines.
Billy Newsom
---
Billy Newsom, webmaster of The Motherboard HomeWorld
http://www.motherboards.org/
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