Social Media: Better than Google?
Google is the undisputed leader in search. It’s so popular, “Google” is now a verb, despite only hitting 10 years of age. According to Netcraft, it owns nine of the top ten most popular web sites in the world.
I have to confess to being a fan of Google. I trust them with my email, word process with them, even analyse my website performance. They’re delivering a service which usually fits my needs.
Like nearly everyone else, I use Google search daily; I’ve tried the other sites like Ask, Yahoo, Windows Live and keep coming back to Google because of its simple presentation and good results.
Recently, however, - and it’s difficult to say exactly why - I’ve been finding the results given by Google just don’t seem to get me to where I want to go quite as quickly. There’s a lot more “noise” appearing in the results: sites sometimes just seem irrelevant.
My sense that all might not be well has been heightened as I’ve watched a niche but popular site relaunch. The old web site was dull and designed around search optimisation. Parts of the site were little more than lists of keywords; some of the language was stilted, presumably designed to put combinations of words in close proximity. And it did well in Google.
The new site is much, much better; real information with links to great resources. People love it! Yet Google has decided it’s crappier and pushed it down the rankings.
In fairness it’s early days, and the site is recovering with some tweaking and time. However it has got me thinking - why on earth are we writing our web sites for the benefit of a computer? Thousands of pounds are spent by even small businesses on “optimising” their web sites. Optimising for who, exactly? Not for people using the site, that’s for sure. If the kind of money spent on search engine optimisation were to be spent on usability work, which more often than not has a budget of zero, I would like to suggest that using the Internet would be a much more pleasurable experience.
I understand that Google doesn’t just use keywords to decide a site’s position; it uses popularity and number of links too as part of its “secret formula”. There’s plenty of evidence, though, that stuffing pages with keywords helps your rank.
Something else has been happening recently to make me feel a little uneasy with going to Google first time, every time. That something else is Social Media.
Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia edited daily by thousands of volunteers, continues to go from strength to strength. Entries are getting more detailed and there are more citations to back up the assertions. Independent research suggests that its accuracy is good. So when I want reference material I’m beginning to turn to a user generated, socially created web site rather than working through Google search results. The availability of new, specialist Wiki sites like the “EeePC Wiki”, where knowledge is shared by enthusiasts around a very specialist topic in a level of detail unsuitable for Wikipeda, is exciting.
One of the joys of Google, however, is finding sites you were unaware of - particularly relevant for news, opinion and gossip. The most popular searches for today include US Open, Rickie Fowler, Justin Hicks, flooding and a website from Barack Obama.
Enter Twitter.com and FriendFeed.com. Here people share sites, news, information, tips and gossip. It’s not uninformed: industry players are on there reporting on meetings they’ve just had with CEOs. In short, it’s right up to date and right in the heart of where news is created. When the latest Chinese Earthquake struck, users on Twitter were reporting and providing commentary long before the BBC - or Google. With Twitter and Friendfeed, you can choose who you get the information from. There’s no secret formula deciding what information you get. Here you choose the people you admire - or perhaps hate - and choose to follow them. It’s interactive too - you can add comment, or sometimes even facts which immediately gets distributed to the network. It can be noisy here too, but it’s good noise - conversations you love eavesdropping on. Don’t like someone’s input? Just stop following them.
I won’t suggest that Google is dead - that would be very premature. However, if someone can come up with a good and effective way of losing the Google search bloat and indexing these social media sites and networks, perhaps Google’s search lead may be dented.
Perhaps then, web sites will be written to appeal to people and not computers.
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