Becoming The Spider: Next Generation SEO Tactics
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007

Just when you believed you had all your SEO tactics figured out, the web goes and changes on you. Not just the rules of the game but it takes the whole web platform right out from under your feet and changes it. What’s a poor webmaster to do?

Web 2.0 changes the whole ballgame. It not only places the Internet user squarely in the middle of things, but it gives that user the means and power to create and manipulate data. Web 2.0 dramatically changes how we view and use the web. Actually, in many respects, it creates a whole new Internet.

In light of Google’s and Yahoo!’s legal and public relations issues and the advent of user-generated content, we think a new development looms on the horizon. Call it what you want but it’s just a matter of time before someone invents and popularizes a niche search engine. The Jayde Network is almost there with its B2B search engine at www.jayde.com.

Someday you’ll be able to log onto your favorite niche search engine. Niche directories have been around almost as long as general directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ. Yahoo! successully made the transition to search engine status with its acquisition of Inktomi. Many of the smaller search engines, however, have struggled. Some of them morphed into PPC search engines are moved off into a different direction entirely, like Miva.

The next phase in search engine development logically means specialization. It could happen one of three ways:

• A small search engine that has been relegated to obscurity, like Dogpile and AltaVista – not to mention InfoSeek, which has transformed into something called Go.com, could spin off into a niche search engine. Many of the smaller search engines have been swallowed by the larger search engines, but where’s the benefit? Does Yahoo! gain anything from Go.com, or Ask.com from HotBot? We suspect that the latter may be a more symbiotic relationship than the former but if Ask keeps growing at the rate that it has for the past year then eventually the benefits of its relationship with Lycos and Hotbot – in any – will diminish. What then?
• Another way this could happen is by a niche directory acquiring a Web crawler and turning intself into a search engine a la Yahoo! style. This could easily happen. Crawlers are readily available these days. Take an industry-specific directory and give it a crawler and you have an instant search engine. They’ve already got the niche cornered, might as well capitalize on it.
• Then the third way is new start up. This is least likely to succeed but the first one on the scene will have a leg up. Even if it doesn’t succeed, it will likely show everyone else how it shouldn’t be done. The followers will improve upon the niche approach and a new entity will be born.

Regional and national search engines have already arrived. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are not the only search engine options the people of the world have. It won’t be long before the search engines of the world will have a more specialized, nichier cohort to compete with. You will see search engines related to home and family, education, politics, art and literature, small business, corporate finance, there is no limit. In a word, Web 2.0 is just getting started. Podcast directories will become podcast search engines. Blog directories, blog search engines. Your home town directory might someday have a crawler. Then the world will truly be a small place.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under MAIN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.