Don’t Count On Search Traffic
Post over at SEOMoz entitled “Don’t Count on Search Traffic in Your Ten Year Plan“.
Ten year plan? On the internet? Quite frankly, I’m lucky if I know what I’m doing a few months out 
That aside, I agree with the general thrust of the article. Search is part of the picture. There once was a time when it was difficult to locate a site on a given topic. No longer. There will probably be thousands of sites on any given topic, so visitors will then exercise choice, and they’ll do so based on how well a site meets their needs.
Some would argue the serps are already factoring in this variable…
May 24th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
I think that’s a very close generalization of web developers. The idea that 10 years from now on the internet is more like 20 lifetimes. pfft Web 2.0, I think we are around Web 15.6.5.4.32 beta.
In regards to Search Engines factoring in what users look for, they are getting there. The problem is, how does a user know what they want unless they have choices and get a smorgasboard of niche sites? I don’t think that will ever be possible on any kind of scale, but hte idea is frightening. If that were to be true there would be no need to create new sites…too saturated, but it all comes back to ‘personality’.
May 24th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Good points.
I suspect much of the personalization will be achieved at a demographic level. Person X fits roughly into group A, Group A have found site Z useful in the past.
Still a long way to go, eh…