Mike Grehan goes through the Stages Search has gone through till today.

First stage – more you have keywords in your doc, higher you rank (pre 1998). This is what we say about ourself.

Second stage – Hubs and Authority – it’s more what others say (links). Google perfected this, it’s the quality of links (from inside your community).

Up to now, main signols were on page and links.

Third Stage – informational, navigational, transational searches (Andre Broder, who I met in 2005 at IBM Research).

Around 2005 Google realized Link data ranking was not such a good idea and new signals need to be looked for.

Mike Grehan now says if you not now the first result, you may not be found. Universal Search is hugely popular but as it turns out most are below the fold.

Look at the top 10 results for Bed and Breakfast in New York.

Cognitive Search – query chains where you refining the query in the same session. After a while people Google does predictive analysis.

Universal Search has changed the psychology of search.

Digital Asset Optimization – what media assets can I optimize for?

What signols does Google has?

Trditionial SEO will dissipear and in it’s place are new signols

1. Social Media, but more importantly the Google Toolbar ( your navigational habits and dwell time are being looked at from Google).

Search engines can only ever have fraction of the web). But it’s the conversation going on between individuals that is now of interest.

Crawling the web will be less important.

2. Search Engines doing content deals with social networks and message boards, etc.

3. Replacing the HTTP protocol; as content becomes more fragmented, complex and rich media, browser based protocols are no longer sufficent.

New Book by Mike Grehan – new signols for Search Engines out next spring and a new paper out next week.