Slight Tremors, Likely Nothing to Worry About

Did ya’ll feel that? It just happened again. Extremely slight but measurable tremors are recorded under the west coast of North America thousands of times a day. At least once a day, a tremor can be felt on Southern Vancouver Island, Mother Earth’s not so subtle memorandum mori. It’s been that way for centuries.

“Geologic time” and “Internet time” are similar in that both are extreme expressions of how we measure time. Geologic time can be measured in eons. The last extreme (9.0) earthquake in the southern Pacific NW happened around in January 1770, mere moments ago in geologic time. Another one is expected anytime between right now and 2250. Apparently these things can happen around here with some frequency, geologically speaking. Living in what will eventually be the epicenter, we learn to take it seriously but put it out of mind. The daily gentle rumbles are rarely even noticed.

Internet time however, can be measured in months, sometimes in days, and in extreme circumstance, in hours. That’s why seismic rumblings in search should be taken seriously by search and social marketers. Deep underground, the search environment is shifting.

Case in point earlier today the Wall St. Journal reported, “Comcast Corp. is negotiating to use Microsoft Corp.’s Internet search services on its broadband portal, a sign the cable titan isn’t happy about its current search deal with Google Inc.”

Another minor rumble felt today came in a NYTimes article by John Markoff about a sophisticated form of fraud built around PPC distribution programs, primarily using Google’s Blogger.

Last week we read about Viacom suing Google’s YouTube for $1Billion and in previous weeks we have read about other distribution partners thinking they should be cut in on some more of the ad revenues Google is generating.

Here on the South-Island, we are told to be prepared for disaster while living our lives as normal. Having an escape route planned for fear of tsunami, several days of food and water, blankets and spare clothing ready, just in case, are common sense recommendations folks with common sense follow.

Similarly it is wise to look beyond the world of search as we know it today when thinking about marketing a website. We know the way people are using the Internet is changing very quickly. Video is replacing image for instance. Text can be replaced by an audio podcast.

Over at Sitepronews.com, we are trying an experiment in getting a brand new website ranked. One of the recommendations I gave to Nadine Pedersen, the owner of Black Swan Book Editing Services is to sign up for as many social media as possible, listing Linked-In, MyBlogLog and MySpace as her immediate priorities. Another was to record the various workshops and writing sessions she facilitates in order to produce a series of audio podcasts. In this way, we hope to diversify her marketing message and present her message in other venues where she might draw traffic to her site.

We also hope to ensure that as user patterns change, we are able to supply information the way those users want to receive it. While not exactly disaster planning, it is using basic common sense to adapt to a rapidly changing environment in which we can feel perceptible seismic activity.