Social Networks, Future Online Search Engines Without Keywords

What if the era of search engines as we know it soon comes to and end? Such a statement may seem exaggerated, it does not lack of relevance: in fact, we are seeing in recent years a decline in search engines. This erosion benefits mainly to social networks and reflects the emergence of new behavioral research.

The undeniable decline in search engines

While Google has never shown such ubiquity in the heart of the daily lives of tens of millions of Internet users, imperturbable despite controversy, it may seem paradoxical to speak of the end of the reign of search engines.

The proportion of direct access, which account for users accessing the site via its URL or managers favorite browsers, meanwhile, remained stable, showing a loss of influence of only 8% in two years. The decay of the search engines mainly benefited from access generated referring sites.

These statistics clearly demonstrate a shift in the centers of gravity: more often, users are freed of search engines to access online content that interest them.

Of the major challenges faced in the search engines

Before 1998 and the advent of Google, many search engines fiercely fought market access to information on the Internet, in direct competition with online directories. Google has quickly established itself: its intuitive interface and the relevance of its results to "byte-light" of those competitors, have allowed him to carve the lion's share in a few years. The start-up founded by two Stanford students now owns nearly 95% market share.

But the web giant is now facing new challenges:

Maintain optimal relevance of the results is difficult to face fraud strategies developed by many SEOs: black hat techniques facilitate positioning among the top results of content with questionable quality. We've all fallen through Google on a page which reads more like a jumble of unintelligible words than prose of Proust.

Prioritize the content is more complicated for a search engine in an era of information overload. So many pages are published every second it becomes difficult to identify those that are part of a short term and those dealing with a subject by taking a basic approach. Moreover, the night sometimes relevance for certain queries, the word office as a means for example that a local cabinet service.

Finding the right words to name a new trend or an innovative product falls also sometimes a challenge.

Exhibit trends is not the agenda on search engines, even if the vibrant media proposed by Google News offers a synthetic quality information. The initiative is always left to the user, who may appreciate being advised or guided to content that may be of interest.

Solutions exist, such as selecting a time slot via search tools or dedicated type Google Trends service. But these solutions do not fit naturally into the user experience. Take a test and ask your relatives if they know how to search for recent content on Google: you might be surprised by the answers given to you!

New alternatives for the online search

One of the first social networks emerged in 2002: Meetup.com was created at the initiative of Scott Heiferman, who wanted the story to "inject into the human web".

Originally used to develop our personal and professional networks, discuss topics that interest us develop projects online, share views, moods and ideas, social networks have also emerged as a great space for content creation and a fully fledged media for information dissemination. Customers have appropriated territory and shaped according to their needs and desires. In 2013, two-thirds of Internet users surveyed by the FIFG recognize that they spend more time in 2012 to share information on social media.

However, dissemination of information through a channel does not necessarily mean that uses oneself said channel to access: research remains mostly passive on social networks. The flow of publications, do not necessarily control the content that is offered. Search features, such as Twitter hashtags, are often short and do not have the precision of a quality of engine like Google.

However, some social networks all rely on their ability to structure information flows for better return. Content aggregators are attracting many users looking for monitoring tools in their chosen fields: in a given February 2014 interview, the co-founder of Scoop.it and announced an attendance of 7,000,000 unique monthly visitors 900,000 registered members.

And new actors reinvent the online search by including a strong social component, wishing to combine the power of big data, with customizing results based on the social ecosystem of users. Openoox.com founded by Denys Torch and Julien Danjon certainly impose its concept: offer in a same site home page available across browser, a social network, a content aggregator, a bookmark manager and dynamic engine human research, based on the likes and recommendations in real-time contacts the user and the community!

The current situation is not far from it, the impending disappearance of search engines. On the contrary, all indications suggest that the engine will continue to occupy even the front of the stage for years to come, certainly in slightly different from those we know today forms. Voice search is imposed on smartphones, universal search has increased the types of results (images, videos, news, etc...) and the Knowledge Graph displays the answers directly on the results page (e.g. Enter "Emma filmography Watson "on Google or" Size Nicolas Sarkozy ").

Search engines do not disarm! Google is constantly improving its algorithm, both to counter the unscrupulous SEOs that improve the user experience: for the single year 2013, the giant would have made 890 changes and updates.

If the search by keywords on dedicated engine like Google will not be abandoned, it will play the role of the main social networks wealth available to a user: the time!

The web players, but also media companies, bloggers, institutions, associations, need to demonstrate greater agility and integrating different points of contact at their disposal to improve their visibility. Quality content, creative and original, thought for the sake of the end user site, optimized for SEO and encouraging social sharing and interactions, relevant presence on social networks, with deep intended to initiate a conversation with consumers, citizens, supporters or curious, play a central role in the success of all digital projects.