Why are search engines valuable?
1: They are the front door to the internet.
When someone wants to do something online, they almost always default to searching.
This means that the search engine that is picked gets used almost every day, if not every day. This is a huge advantage to have.
2: They signal intent
This is where a ton of the value comes from. Think about what you are looking for when you use a search engine. How often are you just looking something up? How often do you have some bigger goal in mind?
What does your query say about you?
3: They signal trends
Now, instead of thinking about what you are querying, think about what everyone is querying. What does that say about the state of the world?
What are people looking for in groups?
From a business perspective, this is valuable information. If you spot a large number of people starting to search for something, there’s an opportunity to come in early and create content for it before it hits its peak. Less competition and more time to let the algorithm boost discoverability.
How Google Takes Advantage
Think about your last search. Did you actually end up making it all the way to a website? Depending on what you were looking for, you may not have.
Google, in their attempt to be helpful to their users, has started offering tools and information within the actual search results. Perhaps it’s a snippet from a Wikipedia entry. Or maybe it’s an answer to the question you asked in the search box? Calculator? It can be one of those. Then there are all the other types of searches: News, Images, Shopping, etc.
What is the value of Google for websites? They drive traffic to your website, so you can monetize users who end up on your site, either directly by selling them something, or indirectly, by serving ads on your site (also probably from Google). If they don’t have to pay out your ads on your site because they can serve the user ads on their search results page, that hurts you, while they still make money. Or they can give the user what they wanted before they need to click through your website.
But they’ll give you analytics for free, you just need to hook up your site to their library, and suddenly, you are helping them collect information on user behavior within your site, in addition to their behavior when searching. Now, we are talking a huge amount of value because they can now figure out all sorts of things that aren’t related to the search process.
The massive amount of value isn’t in the single site or the single search, but in the fact that the majority of websites use these tools.
All of that data adds up to insights and allows Google to corner the market.
Next week in part 2, I’ll break down what you can do to beat Google.
Sneak Peek
As a sneak preview, here’s something I’ve been working on: a new podcast network. I think there’s a ton of value I can capture for podcasters by adding in search functionality. There will be two parts: the search on the site that will allow you to search within the podcasts involved in the network (all episodes aren’t available yet. I’ll be adding in more episodes during the week and then adding a few more podcasts next week).
Then, I’m going to add a search bar on Choose Your Algorithm that will elevate the podcast content above the Google or Bing results. And I’ll also be sharing recommendations based on user search data. The podcaster shares their search URL and that will help drive future content ideally.
See you next week!