Mom + SEO Junkie = Burnt Toast

I love Mel Brooks movies – “History of the World- Part I” is one of my favorites. The wacky blend of comedy, history, shtick, and innuendo makes me smile every time I think about it. The other night I was wondering about how the last decade look like through the lens of a camera? More to the point – what would the internet look like? Now – 98% of the population might not care – and will certainly think I’m a big nerd – but just think – 20 years ago there was no community for the nerds like me – outcasts from the norm hiding in the AV club room talking about D&D (Dungeons and Dragons for you non-nerd types out there) and the new Apple IIe I was going to buy with my babysitting money. Now I have SearchEngineLand, MyBlogLog, a pletora of forums and even the newest addition - Sphinn - to commiserate with my fellow techies (nerd is no longer PC and I have NEVER had a pocket protector - that I’ve put in my pocket anyway.)

Like all things technical - search has grown leaps and bounds in the last 10 years – actually – in the last few years. Like all technology, it takes that one innovator to light the spark that starts the fire that’s fanned by demand. If you asked a business owner 10 years ago, “Do you have a Web site?” The standard answer would have been, “No – do I need one?” These days you’re not considered serious about your business until you have a Web site. When I’m looking at a business I want to partner with or hire – I want to see at least some semblance of innovation. I want to be able to pay my mortgage online or order a movie without leaving my house. If you can’t offer that, I’m going to find someone who can – and I can do it by typing a few words into a browser. Keeping up means being involved, involved owners are acutely aware of their market and if they care about their Web site, they care about their business.

Where have we been?
10 years ago Web sites were 1 or 2 pages of text, MAYBE a photograph if you had a really savvy “webmaster.” Web sites were the “cutting edge” and – like every new idea – business owners had to invest cautiously – because you never really knew if it was going to take off. With those early Web sites came the advent of the search engine – a repository of information that sometimes showed you something relevant – and sometimes it didn’t. But the possibility of finding information is what grew the internet. Instead of hiring someone to lay tile in the bathroom, you could find that information online and teach yourself. Yes, it was all text, and somewhat confusing – but that little bit of guidance was enough to make us more adventurous in what we could do.

Where we are:
15 years ago – if you’d asked me about an obscure subject – lets say - raising camels in Alaska – I’d have told you I didn’t know a thing. Today I can spend 10 minutes on Goggle and find out if it’s possible, how much it would cost, who to talk to about setting up the farm and what to feed them. So I went from someone who knows nothing about a subject, to someone who knows just enough to get in trouble with a camel farm – apparently they spit and it’s not all that pleasant.

With the implementation and advent of new technology, Web sites are more than some words on a page. Today, Web sites are high tech showcases – moving photos and graphics past the visitor’s eye like an enticing commercial on television – beckoning you to move further into the site to buy whatever it is they’re selling. Now someone can embed a video about camel care and feeding right on their Web site and show a poor misguided soul like me that they’re not all that pleasant and probably save some adventurous future camel farmer a lot of dry cleaning bills.

Where we’re going
The future of search – the Web 2.0 effect – is bringing a community together to enhance the information available on any subject. Now I can join a forum full of camel farmers, subscribe to a rss feed that will send me new information as it happens, I can book a trip to the Camel Breeding Association headquarters online and make sure my flight is on time and my hotel reservations are confirmed. I can check reviews of the restaurant next to the hotel and buy tickets to the show down the street. I can actually BUY camels online – I wonder if Al Gore had that in mind when he invented the internet? I forgot to mention, I’m doing all of this newfangled stuff from my cell phone while I’m riding in the car on the way to work in the morning – who’d a thunk it?