The Future of Search has arrived. Or at least it’s arriving, according to a Google webinar held in late July.

Brian and I sort of attended. “The Future of Search” isn’t a bad name to put on the webinar, although to be honest, the material was really more about economy-driven changes to search behavior and new search tools than about some grand Metropolis-style vision of super-intelligent digital entities surfing for electronic nirvana.

We had a bunch of distractions but here’s my $.02 summary.

• consumers are using search a lot more to get better deals and coupons ‘cuz they’re poor and/or jobless
• the future of search is more intelligent web traffic, and consumers spending more time surfing (probably whilst underwear-clad and jobless)
• users are now using 2-3 keywords in their searches rather than 1, realizing that this results in more relevant results

In addition, Google has 3 new webtoys for our enjoyment:

Searchbased Keyword Tool: a cool new keyword research tool that suggests keywords and keyphrases based on the content on your site. Nice idea.

From Google’s help page on the “sktool”: “The main difference between the Search-based Keyword Tool and the Keyword Tool currently in AdWords is that the former generates keyword ideas based on your website, and identifies those currently not being used in your AdWords account. Additionally, the Search-based Keyword Tool provides more detailed data for each keyword, such as category information, suggested bid that may place the ad in the top three spots of a search results page, and ad/search share. Both tools, however, offer the option of browsing all keywords across all categories.

“You may also notice that some of the data (like such as the monthly search volume) may vary slightly between the two tools, which is due to different methods of calculation at this time.”

Website Optimizer: for super-intense conversion analysis of high-traffic pages.

With this thing, you make a zillion versions of the target page, playing with variables like calls to action, graphics, headlines, design, whatever, each at unique URLs. Website Optimizer randomly displays different versions to users. These URLs could be bookmarked by users, so after your experiment finishes, you want to keep these URLs valid. A WO “experiment” with 3 page variations will typically need around 300 conversions before drawing any conclusions.

and lastly, Google Insights for Search.

“With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. Useful for comparing different keyphrases over different regions and timeframes.”

You can hear a full recording of the Google webinar online. It does require a password, but just contact us and we’d be happy to share it with you. (We don’t want to get in trouble in case the Future of Search is copyrighted etc.) Enjoy!

Tags: future, future of search, Google, google seminar, google webinar, insights for search, optimizer, search, search based keyword, search based keyword tool, searchbased keyword tool, sktool, website, website optimizer

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under search trends. 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.