This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Let's think about how search engines rank Web sites. One of the main components that factor if page A should rank above page B is the linkage data. Simply because, that was the way the World Wide Web worked. Page A links to Page B so the reader of Page A can find out more about a particular topic.
If people are now less likely to navigate the Web via hyperlinks and are more likely to navigate via search engines, we have the potential to lose one of the core factors in ranking criteria, linkage data. This of course is not an issue now, the if you saw the chart posted at the conference, the line graph was pretty shocking, in my opinion. User navigation via hyperlinks were declining at the rate user navigation via Web search. If this trend continues, less and less linkage data will be available for search engines to rank Web sites.
I thought to myself, can this happen, is it happening? Are people not linking to Web sites anymore and relying on the user to use Web search? First memory that popped into my head was that I have noticed that many new pages are linking to search results. For example, I commonly notice a sentence like, "If you want more information about widget, search Google." where the link to Google would contain the search phrase. Not convinced yet? Well, my new OS (Apple Tiger) came with a new search feature named "Spotlight" which has revolutionized the OS. Everything I right click on, any word, any file, pretty much anything in any program has an added two options. (1) Search in Spotlight and (2) Search in Google. How hard is it for someone to now right click on a search phrase or word and click on "Search in Google". Am I saying people will stop linking to pages? I doubt that; look at the number of times I linked to other pages in this entry. But think about the possibility of such a future.
Referring back to McLuhan's laws, or questions for considering the implications of a new course of action (in his terms, new media)...
- What does the artifact enhance or intensify or make possible or accelerate?
- If some aspect of a situation is enlarged or enhanced, simultaneously the old condition or unenhanced situation is displaced thereby. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new "organ"?
- What recurrence or retrieval of earlier actions and services is brought into play simultaneously by the new form? What older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back and inheres in the new form?
- When pushed to the limits of its potential … the new form will tend to reverse what had been its original characteristics. What is the reversal potential of the new form?
The search revolution on the internet has clearly been advancing the possibilities associated with the first three questions, and companies like Google and DigitalGrit have taken advantage of those possibilities. But how long until the last question leads to a new "media" landscape becomes a real strategic question?
Will "subjective" relevance replace the more mathematical linkage algorithms?
Will paid placement dominate search as the natural listing ranks deteriorate?
Will link-building become more important as link traffic drops, or less as rankings rely less on linkages?
Just a bit of thinking about change applied to my 9-to-5.
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