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The past year saw immense growth in the search sector. Search is bigger
today than it was twelve months ago in every respect. With the Internet
becoming a larger part of people’s lives and broadband access becoming the
norm around the world, 2005 was the year that big business fully
recognized the full impact of search.
The search sector drives web-traffic by providing each web user with the
dynamic road maps and signposts that make the web usable. This fact has
finally become staggeringly obvious to anyone with an interest in the web.
That these road maps are self-generating and are increasingly influenced
by the interests of the individual user makes search the most powerful
medium in the world. The largest of the search firms have found a stable
business model in paid contextually delivered advertising that promotes
growth while providing unequaled opportunities for advertisers.
Studying for 642-436 followed by 70-293 and then 70-294 becomes easier for students who have done 70-536 and 70-647 but have not studied 650-393.
Sensing the enormous potentials, investors piled money into a sector that
was super-heated by interest surrounding Google’s IPO. Eighteen months of
mega-money funding set the stage for the influx of innovative features and
tools each of the major players introduced recently. The presence of so
much money has also sparked grass roots innovation seeing an increasing
number of formal start-ups and home-baked software design enthusiasts
produce an array of search related tools and products. Today, nearly every
digital product can be searched in one way or another. Among the greatest
developments of the year was the expansion of search engine databases to
include a variety of file formats previously inaccessible to search engine
spiders.
Investment in the growth of the search industry coincides with vast
improvements in US home Internet access options that until recently acted
as a long-term construction-zone on the information super-highway.
Regardless of where the web is going and the role the search sector is
going to play in it, most individuals and businesses rely on the free,
organic listings. Those listings will remain an important focus for the
search engines as they will continue to provide the primary interactive
point between home-user and the search engines. The impact of organic
placements will obviously be enhanced by the growth of the search sector
however once the user follows a link from the organic SERPs, they will
likely encounter a great deal of paid-advertising, everywhere else they
go. Repetition is the key to memory and competitive advertisers should
note the seemingly unlimited power of paid-contextual advertising,
especially for Google’s AdWords program. When users don’t encounter
AdWords, they almost certainly encounter advertising from Overture,
AskJeeves, FindWhat/Espotting, and others as they all have their plans for
2006.
2006 is going to be an extremely intense year. If things are quiet and
peaceful in your universe over the next few weeks (and here’s to hoping it
is), take a break and read as much as you possibly can. If you have the
time to explore, mess around with the new tools and features. Take some
professional development time to learn a bit about XML, RSS, FLASH and PHP.
Ask your family and friends about their search habits. You may be
surprised at the new sophistication that is shaping up. The future, at
least as the search sector is concerned is going to be very friendly and
increasingly informative. Now that the web is going to become faster for
its largest population, it is also going to be increasingly interesting. |
