When I first used the Internet in 1987 I was setting up a multi-site email system for a UK based company. Later, in 1992, I started using bulletin boards that had to be dialled into directly by modem. 1993 was my first experience of the World Wide Web, using the Mosaic Browser on Windows 3.1 through a 56K modem. The method used was to enter a URL into the browser which then took you to the Web site. Once there we had the ability to jump between pages or navigate to other Web Sites through Hyperlinks (Yes we called them Hyper in those days). Most of my early explorations were done using magazine listings of web sites which were ubiquitous at the time. It was just a case of finding a web site that interested you in the web site listings magazine, then typing the URL from the magazine into the Mosaic browser and ‘Hey Presto’ you were surfing the web! Once there, you would often see links to other web sites and so you would begin a sometimes interesting, but often a disappointing /boring /unusual /irrelevant trip around the web. The whole concept of a network of information as intended by Sir Tim Berners-Lee hadn’t yet been grasped by the users of the Internet. Probably because the whole concept of a democratic network of information, where you were both a consumer and a provider of information, was so hard for us to grasp. We were used to a top down hierarchical model of Information distribution. Initially we received information about the world through Clerics and Town Criers, then 500 years ago we had the revolution of the printing press, then much later radio and TV accelerated things once more, but they were all top down, hierarchical and broadcasted means of information distribution, a one to many model. We just weren’t used to the new paradigm of Information distribution and exchange that was the Internet when it first appeared.
So that’s why Search Engines became successful so quickly. We had to have a way of indexing the information on the internet in a hierarchical manner so that we could begin to comprehend and navigate its growing enormity and complexity. We took to search engines like a fishes to water. I seem to remember that Alta Vista was all the rage and like so many others I made it my home page on my browser. It was the starting point at which I went off on my wondrous journeys on the web. That was almost twenty years ago now and you know what ……….. I rarely start my journeys on the internet on a search engine anymore. I’m willing to bet that you don’t either. I believe that the reason for this is that we are beginning to catch up with the paradigm of networked information and how to use it. I don’t start my internet experiences by saying I want to find so-and-so anymore, I just start. I enter and follow the paths of information that open up before me. This could be by going onto Facebook and following a link posted by a friend, or by seeing an interesting tweet, or by just coming across a web site on Stumbleupon. I can honestly say that the only times I use Google these days is to find something on Wikipedia or to check SERPs for SEO purposes.
This change of Internet Information use has obviously been brought about by Social Media. I believe that Social Media has only become so dominant, because Internet users have found that it fits with their new and developing relationship with information. You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. In my opinion Social Media is so successful on the Internet because it fits far closer to the original design brief of the World Wide Web as set by Sir Tim Berners-Lee … a network of information …. combined with the fact that people now understand the paradigm of networked information.
So what we have with Search Engines is an imposing of a hierarchical information model upon a networked information model. It used to work when our heads were that way inclined, when we wanted things listed in order of importance , but now this way of looking at the Internet is beginning to creak. The headlong rush to be at the top of the search listings, and the amount of effort and money that is spent to be there, is a symptom of the incongruous nature of two different ways of looking at data; Pandas and Penguins won’t solve this situation. Only a new type of Search Engine will, or is the Internet a search engine in itself and we are merely becoming better and better at navigating it without the aid of Google?
BY SEO STEER
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