A few words typed into a search bar can access pages of information, in what is perhaps the biggest evolution of the digital age: how society answers questions. But even if all the world’s information is readily available, it means little without the ability to organize it.
Ever since Google’s web crawling first began exploring the Internet in 1997, the company has woven itself into the fabric of many people’s lives. In 2006, “google” was added as a verb to the Oxford English Dictionary.
By providing faster, better and more accurate search results, Google has exponentially increased the speed at which people can access information.
Despite Google’s benevolent image as a company offering new and exciting ways to use and share information, it remains a business — one that brought in revenues of $29 billion in 2010.
And how Google makes that money, through the sale of online advertisements, has fundamentally changed how marketers reach consumers.
Today, many brands and companies have an online presence that allow for easy access to products, reviews and information.
With the growth of these websites, the search engine optimization (SEO) field has become enormously important in helping companies become the top ranked site in their field.
Now, with social media changing the nature of Internet once again, things are shifting for marketers, companies and consumers, connecting the three in a much more personal way.
It’s a Google-powered world these days, and everyone is taking advantage of it.
Searching the past
When Frances Montgomery first began working at Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library in 1973, things were a little less digital.
Books and databases were indexed on cards and information was organized on shelves and in filing cabinets.
Research could be a painstaking effort, with accessible knowledge often limited to what lay within the four walls of the library. With the arrival of digital technology, Montgomery says limited resources are a thing of the past.
“In the electronic age, we can do more to help people,” says Montgomery, Carleton’s government information librarian. “We used to be limited to what we had in the building or could access through inter-library loans.”
When search engines arrived in the 1990s, Montgomery says different ones offered different ways of searching and displaying information. Some search engines indexed databases better while others were better for searching recent items.
“It was nice when we had a lot of choice with search engines,” Montgomery says. “Now most have consolidated into two or three large ones.”
Google’s dominance in the field has changed expectations for searching, Montgomery says. For students in today’s university environment, Google’s familiarity has driven away the desire to search effectively, Montgomery says.
“Searching used to be a highly valued intellectual skill,” she says. “With large search engines today, you can find ‘something,’ but you may not find the most appropriate or useful information.”
Even though Google has made accessing information easier, Montgomery says, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the most useful information.
“You have to put your trust in those companies that they’ll display the information you’re looking for,” she says.
Searching the market
For most of its existence, much of Google’s revenue has come from its ability to sell advertisements to companies that appear next to search results and on websites.
Besides being a venue for these advertisements, Google acts as a gatekeeper to a company’s online presence.
By using search engine optimization companies are able to become the top results when a term related to them is searched, giving them a competitive edge over other companies online.
Robin Ritchie, a marketing professor at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, says over the years, SEO has adapted to changes in Google’s search engine.
“In the very early days of SEO, it was really about, what was the content of your site?” Ritchie says, referring to content that appeared in the code of a website, but wasn’t visible to viewers.
Google then switched the search results priority to recognize hyperlinks that link to and from a website — the theory being the more links a site had, the more important it was.
Now, Ritchie says, the search results priority is shifting to the currency of content being posted on a site and how local the content is to the searcher.
“First and foremost, you need to create great content for your website,” says Jeff Quipp, the CEO of Search Engine People, a SEO and Internet marketing company he started in Ajax, Ont. 10 years ago.
“You want to make visitors real fans as well, instead of just playing games with the [traffic] numbers,” he says.
SEO has moved to a point where providing quality content has become a requirement in the era of online companies, Quipp says.
Sharing interesting content beyond what’s related to the company’s products is important, Quipp says, because it makes that visitor want to come back in the future and eventually become a customer.
And as social media plays an increasingly large role in the modern Internet landscape, there are more ways than ever to direct potential customers to that web content.
The social search
As social media has risen in popularity, traditional SEO companies like Quipp’s have had to adopt the best practices in the field to help their clients stay relevant with online users, he says.
“What we’re trying to do is get companies’ profiles on those tools like Facebook and Twitter, and then use them to get users to follow to traditional websites,” he says.
By using a company’s own website as a home base of sorts, Quipp uses social media to reach out and contact users in many different channels, as a supplement to more traditional SEO tactics like link sharing.
But even though social media has done a lot to give users and consumers a voice, it has come at the cost of personal information.
“It’s ironic, we live in an age of consumer empowerment and at the same time consumers feel more vulnerable because they’re being tracked by marketers,” Ritchie says.
Although it started off a search engine, Google now has an arsenal of products, including Google Accounts, which offers access to well-known services like Gmail, Google Plus and Google Calendar.
Now, Ritchie says, when users search while signed into these accounts, Google is able to build a much more accurate profile of the user based on what they search.
“It takes that information and it makes sure it serves you search results that are deemed to be relevant to you and that’s based on your expressed interest and what you’ve clicked in the past,” he says.
By collecting this type of information, both on Google and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, marketers are better equipped with knowledge about how to reach potential customers.
As an example, Ritchie cited Facebook advertising, where brands and companies will pop up on your screen based on what your friends “like.”
Just as online marketers have adopted social media as a tool to reach people, search engines are beginning to put more of a focus on people’s own tastes and habits when delivering results, Quipp and Ritchie say.
“[Social media] has some impact on the ranking algorithms right now, but it’s going to have a profound impact going forward,” Quipp says.
