Search Purity: Holy Grail or Hucksterism…
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Universal search, local search, mobile search. Seriously folks, WTF! A day doesn’t pass without reports of some new panacea curing all search ills, some new silver bullet that drops the hairy beast haunting the annals of SEO and SEM.
Web Dreams
And last Friday was notable for the fact that news of Google’s newest web dream (yes that was a ‘b’ not a ‘t’) is Universal Search. As Google executives describe it, the results will include news stories, blogs, videos, maps and several other content sources. Now when you ask a question you will no longer be presented with the ten best URL’s - Google will offer you the ‘ten best answers!’
Mind Reading
Google is forging fearlessly towards giving you what you want, NOT what you asked for. In fact, this brings me nicely to a wee rant I’ve been meaning to share for a while now - it’s called my “Purity of Search” argument.
Purity of Search - The Concept
In the beginning… Sorry, wrong story - well kind of. There are some really cool overlaps, but we will save those for a light news day. For now, my basic premise is this:
The search engines have always aspired to provide you with the best answer to your question.
General Search - The Concept
The design was simple: you ask for something and your chosen search engine finds it and gives it to you. All search engines struggled with tricksters and coders polluting the search seas, stacking the deck with tactics that trip you and practices that confound you. Nevertheless, over time the search engines got smarter - and continue to do so…
Lastest Dance - The Algorithm Shuffle
Every few months the giant Google rattles its chains and rolls out a new super algorithm update and the world quakes, waiting to see what happens to their rankings. But I say there is nothing to fear if you stop chasing yesterday’s algorithms and follow the purity argument.
The End Is Near?
If what you are creating - the websites, the reports, and the relationships - is really a solid and true representation of the best possible answer to a subject, you will eventually be rewarded for those efforts. In fact, the problem with many of today’s SEO/SEM ‘experts’ is that they are focusing too much emphasis on what I refer to as hucksterism and parlour tricks. It’s old news… chasing the algorithm is silly, and futile and ultimately self defeating.
Take The Long Short Cut
Get ahead of the curve, take a more pragmatic viewpoint. Sure, it will take a while longer but that’s why they invented advertising options like PPC etc. Stop chopping and changing your website pages, stop changing your URL’s and chasing shadows - they’re moving targets and you’ll waste your resources.
Simply focus on the end goal. Create quality content, provide real resources of value, make relationships of substance, and trust the Internet is evolving upwards towards the holy grail of search - giving you precisely what you want… not what you asked for.
And The Winner Is…
YOU. The best “answer” will eventually be found and rewarded - the search engines are getting closer to finding it each day. Cheap SEO/SEM tactics will ultimately fall to superior strategy and quality content framed within a meaningful context.
This is purity of search. 
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