This is a short entry because it’s very late, I’m very tired, and I still have tons of unread email…
In thinking about Google’s future competitively and how they might eventually fall by the wayside, I always bring up the single example of a site I consistently use to find better content than what’s available through Google’s SERPs. Granted, this engine doesn’t operate perfectly for every query (not even close), but for me, it’s become a search destination when I know the regular engines can’t acceptably fulfill my needs.
Have a look at some comparative searches:
- Furniture vs. at Google
- Luggage vs. at Google
- Laptops vs. at Google
- SEO vs. at Google
- Web Design vs. at Google
- Politics vs. at Google
- Shoes vs. at Google
- Web 2.0 vs. at Google
- Blogging vs. at Google
- Writing vs. at Google
Yeah, I’m talking about the popular tag pages at Del.icio.us. If you look through the results above you’ll see some serious patterns. Del.icio.us is:
- More timely
- More focused on what someone in my demographic might want
- Offers more high quality results
- Provides a greater variety of results (in scope)
- Doesn’t always list the “best” results first
- Has some accuracy and relevance problems
- Is either 10X better or 10X worse than Google depending on what you’re looking for
I think that if Googlers are looking for a threat to their dominance over the web experience, they should start with Del.icio.us. Likewise, if intelligent entrepreneurs are truly seeking a way to compete with the search giant, this is the route they should take. If Yahoo! focused some serious resources here and extended their ownership to places like Digg, Reddit & StumbleUpon, I believe they could build a social-relevance based engine that would show some pretty fantastic content.
BTW – On an unrelated topic – you need to read How to Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M from Andy Hagans. Genius post and very smart advice, even if you don’t have any desire to build an affiliate site.
