Search has been dominant enough on the web to create some of the biggest names in the Industry. And there is no denying who the most dominant name in the field. Google has now gone on to dominate other content niches while others are trying harder than ever to grab its place. Yahoo, Microsoft have always been vying for it since the time Google changed the dynamics of being a web publisher (Portals to search). With Wikia and Cuil, other information hubs have also tried their hands at cracking the search code.
With no imminent success in sight, local content has become the source of some huge competition. The attempt of course is to replicate Google’s success on the web on regional searches and mobiles, this is true specially in India, I wonder what the scenario is elsewhere. Google itself has been actively scouting for partners in mobile and local search along with Yahoo, while Microsoft has gone on to invest in a mobile firm.
The game has also extended beyond content search to other avenues of information. Microsoft’s live search introduced maps, even Rediff introduced maps a couple of weeks back for instance. Google meanwhile went to try and bring TV to the map (please don’t miss the pun there). Everything is not rosy yet for Google with it lagging behind Yahoo in Japan and strange errors cropping up costing them embarrassment and dollars.
In the meanwhile, another medium is slowly rising up the ranks as competent alternative to big G. Quite a few marketers are now looking at Twitter and its conversational mannerisms as the perfect evolution of search. WATblog had also covered an article chronicling twitter monetization’s possibility the same way as Google and how it is fundamentally placed to be Google’s successor in search. Twitter with its fellow apps is changing the way search happens on the web. As more people begin to use their services with the intention of digging for information (no, no pun intended there) it will form new search habits, because the twitter search results are different from web search. It will make inroads into conversational marketing and be tie up the loose ends in conversations, search and research. Social bookmarking did this to an extent, but it being a system of traffic more than conversations didn’t quite alter the graph.
Search as we see it is changing before us. Search brought the first democracy on the web, and it is now rejuvenating.
