The science of domains and search engine optimization in general revolves around the fact that Internet users are creatures of habit; some strings of phrases and numbers work, while others fail to catch on. Understanding these habits, calculating them, and using your findings for the bettering of your business is how people find success via the World World Web. As long as people keep typing words into Google and website names into browsers, the job of an SEO consultant doesn’t get any more complicated than it already is.
The problem is that people aren’t typing words into Google or browsers – at least not as much as they used to. Soon, it seems, such actions will be completely irrelevant. This is due to the advent of personal assistant apps and other forms of consumer-level artificial intelligence, most famously demonstrated in the latest software offering from Apple: the iPhone app know as Siri. With such software, individuals will no longer be conducting web searches directly; people will opt instead to simply ask their personal assistant app to do the searching for them.
The problem for Internet entrepreneurs is this: how do you convert a system based on human tendencies into something workable in an age when humans are no longer doing the actual web searching? What will it matter what your domain name is, if the relatively shallow judgments of a human searcher are no longer a relevant component? We’re already seeing more clicking on links as a way to find content via social media versus actually typing and searching. There’s no telling how much more the importance of keywords and phrases will be diluted as such technology advances.
It won’t simply be a matter of deciphering the tendencies of a select number of personal assistant apps – no, it wouldn’t be that easy. Instead, such software, like Siri, is sure to meld its searching techniques with the selection habits of a particular user. If SEO and domain profiteering today were like sending a rocket from Earth to the Moon, the introduction of personal assistants will make it more like sending a rocket from Earth to the moon of another planet; a whole new set of calculations will have to be compromised with existing ones.
Once humans predominantly exit the equation of the search, where will that leave domains and SEO? The more important question to ask is, “How will SEO strategists evolve into a new age of searching?” As representatives of the future face of Internet marketing, you tell me.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Dan, you bring up several great points in this blog entry. Recently I attended BlogWorld here in Los Angeles. At one of the network mixers I met an individual who is currently working on a search engine which is completely voice activated. It allows you to search using your voice and it allows you to hear the results that it finds.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what will be coming next in the search sector. As domain investors we have to face the music that in the next ten years things will be changing and it might not be moving in our direction.
This sound a lit bit scary for domainers and their domains!
I like how you explained these aspects of the future of SEO, Dan and yes, time will tell. I think you hit several points on the nose.
Most people would like to have their business or individual names on their domains. With the points highlighted, SEO folks will get involved with advising domain names to the clients and hope in the future SEO techniques will be familiar with every one using internet…
agree most of web doing well SEO if want raise the SERP