Webwork - 7:32 pm on Jul 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

I'd like to suggest that Google can be interpreted as a directory that is assembled "on the fly". It provides a hierarchical listing of companies or websites that its algo interprets and presents as if the same is responsive to the query.

Given that there are limits to the number of businesses that are online - lots of business website pages but not necessarily billions of businesses - I have never been convinced that Google should remain the be all and end all of commercial search.

In my view one of the reasons for Google's emergence was the poor execution of an online strategy of the existing entities who had expertise in commercial/business search. They simply didn't get their heads and IT management wrapped up and around the long term vitality of moving their data online. Now they are playing catch-up ball.

In my view it's still too early in the game to call a winner. Sure, there is ample proof of Google's dominance. Yet, there are some big players slowly beginning to get their act together. YellowPages.com is one example of a player that is slowly getting its game on. There's likely more to come, especially in various verticals.

So I wouldn't write off directory search any time too soon.

The very fact that some think of Google as the IT suggests that there will be any number of businesses looking at other channels. In other words, if EVERYONE is looking to be #1 in IT only so many can do that on any day. What does one do then to drive traffic?

If another search vehicle emerges that gets the job done for you then Google is what?

I'm forever amused by those prepared to call the search game over. I might be the fool in this bit of amusement, befuddled and therefore fooled by my own thinking. I'll give you that. But since I'm prepared to say I may be the fool that means I'm also willing to say that I think we're still in the first inning of the process of learning to connect with businesses online. Finding a website or a company ain't all search.

You may have noticed, for example, the push into social media marketing of business. Who needs search when "your network" can refer you to a business?

Review sites? They're still working on the model.

News media working it's way into a sustainable online business model?

CraigsList as the preemptive local city (subject matter) default search for many?

Any number of these eyeball aggregating sites may offer - or do offer, in some fashion - a version of hierarhical "directory search".

Just because they don't call it the CraigsList directory doesn't mean that's not exactly what's going on. Take another look at CraigsList and tell me what you see when you take off the "this isn't a directory" blinders.

Ditto tag clouds / Digg. Ditto a whole world of "voting directoies": "Let's get together and vote on (subject X), create and rank a list." Voila. Another directory is born and people search within it.

Why do you think Google didn't stop with its search page? Maybe Google sees the future as being a time where search is fractured, diversified, specialized.

But don't let my "1st inning" analogy - or rationalization - stop you from abandoning all hope of ever executing a plan that might work in serving the search or directory space.

[edited by: Webwork at 7:49 pm (utc) on July 9, 2007]