Last week the world changed. Not that you probably noticed. And no, we’re not talking about anything to do with elected officials or the economy. One of the major enabling technologies, one of the technologies that makes working from home possible, just changed the rules of the game.
Google announced that its search engine would now promote personalized searching. You like one of the results from a search? Promote it to the top of the page. It’ll be there the next time your search. Don’t like others? Click, they’re banished. What’s more, they have served notice that sites without video will be demoted.
Don’t think that’s all a big deal? Think again. That means that all the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) gurus are out of work–or at least are going to have to reinvent themselves. That means all the link-baiting and keyword stuffing efforts are irrelevant, and useful content–relevancy–will be pivotal. Finally. That means every website owner is going to be scrambling to find a way to add video to their sites.
And get this: Google has technology that will “watch” a video, extract the spoken content, convert it to text, and index it right along with the written content on a site. Think that one over a bit, and you’ll see why we think the rules have changed.
Add that to the fact that the cost of voice communication now is distance independent, and that memory is almost free. It costs the same to talk to someone next door as it does across the country. Free long distance. And we just bought a 4Gb SDHC memory chip for a camera and a 1 terabyte (1000 Gb) external hard drive for one of our computers. The chip price went from $64 to $15 in three months, and the hardrive was just $116 from Amazon with no tax and free shipping. Blame it on desperate retailers, but the trend is real.
I dunno about you, but I have a good feeling. If our new president puts the emphasis on broadband infrastructure and telework that he says he will, and if giants like Google continue to innovate like they have, the future is going to be very interesting.
Have you heard that Google has been noodling on the idea making free wifi available virtually everywhere?
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