I ran across an interesting blog post about the coming demise of our industry.
The author Steve Murch has some interesting points that I do agree with. But I am a pretty optimistic person.
I was afraid when Google Base came out, but if Google just keeps Google Base the same I am not worried because Google Base does not have the best user experience.
I am trying to get Steve to come on my podcast show so we can discuss this issue more.
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3 users responded in this post
I agree with many things he is saying but I don’t think major search engines will be the only place users go to for searching for classifieds and if they do, better for the niche classified sites because that means either google has crawled your data or you gave them your data to drive people to your site.
Also, the day Google, Yahoo, or others host the entire content of a product is the day that these same niche sites will stop allowing them to crawl their listings. Look at Move.com. They are directly competing with the for sale and for rent sites and many of them are saying stop crawling my data.
I don’t think he is neccesarily saying google wants to host the content but he says in three years that traffic will more likey be directed towards Suppliers rather that Classified sites. I feel the suppliers, offering services like http://www.escapia.com/ who post client ads on classifieds vacation sites as a service, will be feeding the classified sites content which in turn Google will crawl and put into search results. I don’ t see his distinction between the two.
I do feel many more people will continue to go to search engines for what they are looking for but at the end of the day, the information they will be receiving will be from niche sites. Google’s mission is to organize all of the worlds information and make it available to everyone. Google does not want to own the worlds information but rather collect it and send the user to that specific destination.
Hi Dave & Sam,
I think it’s a sure thing that Google Base won’t be the same as it is in 3 years time. I agree in version 1.0 it’s not too much of a threat.
Google Base, and MSN Expo, and CraigsList, and Yahoo Classifieds, and Oodle and more are all about making classified ads free. Google and the other search engines have a lot of economic incentives (not just mission fulfillment) to structure the search for real estate, hard goods, travel, and more. The storage required to create a few pages and photos to advertise anything you want to — is essentially free.
I guess I’m suggesting that we’re in the early stages of niche classified ad-based sites going away, or being greatly diminished in value.
In the mid-90′s through about 2005, classified ads moved from newspapers to the web, in highly specialized verticals. The search engines had more than enough work on their hands to get people from keywords to a bunch of URL’s.
But people don’t want URL’s that index high on “Denver home for rent”. As you folks correctly recognize, they actually want a list of Denver homes for rent, ideally with photos and an ability to narrow down their search criteria.
My point is that this process IS essentially a search experience. And that puts you on Google’s railroad tracks, perhaps many miles down the pike, but on the tracks nonetheless.
Now, that’s not necessarily bad, if you can amass enough strategic value ahead of the day when Google decides to respond to the query “Denver home for rent” in a much better way.
In v1.5, the Net has some rudimentary efforts in free, structured data-plays hitting the web (like Google Base).
Version 2.0 of this and beyond is for the search engines themselves to start structuring the search. Islands of classified ad sites — whether they be job-boards, home exchange boards, boat sales, etc., will probably be picked off one by one by the major search engines over the next five years or so.
Once they structure the search, they’re in control of who sees what. They can flip a switch, and say “anyone who wants to publish to this XML spec can be in our top search results — anyone else is in the unwashed URL’s that follow”. “Oh, and by the way, if you’d like to sponsor us to show up in the sponsored ads to the right hand side, we’d gladly accept your marketing dollars.”
The value created is in the search role, not the hosting role.
I don’t expect them to host the data themselves, but I do expect the major search engines to augment their “create a page online” services with something along the lines of a much, much richer Google Base, plus XML services that people can plug into to participate in that marketplace.
— “My point is that this process IS essentially a search experience. And that puts you on Google’s railroad tracks, perhaps many miles down the pike, but on the tracks nonetheless.” —
Steve, you bring up a very good point.
I still think that sites like mine will have far greater value than what Google can produce because we can gear web features towards our niche.
The one guy at Google responsible for our niche will probably not be that excited about making Google better over and over again. He will get lazy and not listen to the property managers.
Also Google is all about handling all their issues with an algorithm and won’t want to tailor features to our industry.
Steve, I can tell you speak with great experience – far more than me. Why not come on my podcast show?