• Register
• Log in

SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Algorithm analysis, Web community relationship analysis, SEO practices and techniques, industry news, etc.

• Home
• About SEO Theory
• SEO Glossary

ThirdGen Web optimization and you

Posted by Michael Martinez on November 2, 2007 in SEO Theory

What should the ThirdGen Web look like? We brought users and content together in the first generation of the Web. We brought users and search together in the second generation. So what else can we bring together for the third generation?

My guess is that the combination of users and technology will define the ThirdGen Web. Today’s Web is already struggling to fit into smaller and larger browser windows as we build larger screens and import the Web to smaller and smaller devices.

Voice-activated Web applications have been around for quite a while but they may become more important as an increasing number of people try to reach Web resources through their cell phones. Have you ever tried to navigate past a Flash intro screen on your cell phone? Please let me know how to do it, because I had to give up when I wanted to contact a major company’s customer service from my car the other day.

The World Wide Web was created to be the users’ hub for all types of content. There is no limit to what we can provide on the Web because the Web is only limited by the technology we use to create it and to browse it. You should be able to drive a car that reaches out to the Web to grab data that tells it whether it needs a tune up.

You should be able to download recipes from the Web directly to your stove, your refrigerator, your recipe box. Think of the ThirdGen Web as highly segmented by data types rather than by document types.

A normal browser can look at the content types but a task-specific browser will be restricted to looking only at certain content types. Yes, that sounds very much like the Semantic Web that Tim Berners-Lee and others want to implement. I’m not sure they will get their wish, but there is nothing to prevent today’s manufacturers from introducing the Web to tomorrow’s appliances.

Most American homes are already wired for Web access through their telephone and cable jack networks, but the diminishing cost of wireless hubs will soon make it feasible for most households in the United States to tie all their Web-enabled appliances together.

Your entertainment system could go grab (legally distributed) movies, songs, and television shows from the Web.

Your telephone system can look up profiles on incoming callers for you.

Your computer can be the central administration tool of your home network, grabbing configuration data for appliances as you plug them in to your network, updating their Web reference tables, and helping you refine or enhance your appliance-enabled Web experience.

In such an environment an optimizer cannot wait for latent semantic analysis to become a reality. Instead, you will have to find ways to create semantically active content. That won’t necessarily be as easy as slapping a few XML tags into your Web pages. What if you cannot implement the XML tags directly into the pages? What if you need to extract only a selection of data for XML distribution?

Semantic markup doesn’t have to rely upon XML syntax. That’s just one proposed method, and it’s a very crude method fraught with high investment costs. Instead of making the Web easier to create and manage, XML imposes a higher cost. The market pressures may demand (and get) better treatment.

Search will remain fundamental to connectivity. But instead of universal search (which is useful for a very generalized browser audience) we’ll see the growth of highly specialized search channels. Sure, people will find ways to monetize them and thus to spam them, but those search channels will make it possible to find the right data for your Web-capable appliances (and tools).

Imagine setting up a workshop where you can download plans and instructions for building furniture, boats, toys, or special materials.

Imagine setting up a business where you download the latest manuals for your heavy machinery right onto the machines.

National restaurant chains could use the Web to distribute updated menus, special offers, and coupons directly to consumers who set up special “Promotional Appliances” in their homes. The promotional appliance would download everything from a dedicated advertising channel. Some people might call it spam-in-a-box but at least we’d have a mechanism that would pay for itself fairly.

In such a ThirdGen Web environment, the optimization strategist would have to identify the right channels to distribute information across. If there were several competing channels the strategist would have to know something about each channel. One incentive for manufacturers to support multiple channels would be security (what if a channel is breached? Switch to another); another incentive would be consumer flexibility-friendliness.

Search channel optimization would not have to focus on relevance so much as on semantic identification. But semantic identification might cover a broad range of possibilities. And people would still want the ability to check out all this direct-to-channel data before plugging their appliances and networks into it. That means you’d have to make it easy for people to find the information through a general browser.

General browsers still rely on general search engines.

General search engines still rely on traditional search optimization techniques.

SEO doesn’t look much different today from the way it looked 9 years ago. I don’t think it’s going to look very different in another 9 years. We’ll change out tools and search services. We’ll change out techniques. We’ll identify new bad and best practices. But we’ll still working hard to help people find the right information in the right place.

That’s one way I’d like to see it go. How about you?