or the beginning of the end of search engine marketing as we know it…?

Yahoo! just released beta of its novel approach to search called Y!Mindset. It is intent-driven search. A veritable buzzword as you have to try it to work out what it means. So, due to the buzzword alert I started sceptical but I must say I found the experience interesting and once I realised its full implications, very uplifting indeed.

The search is adjustable according to the underlying intention of either shopping or researching. Websites are evaluated by Yahoo!’s own scoring and they do not make any pretense that it’s not definitive and is still evolving.

I have put in a search for one of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett and once the search results were up I could skew them either towards commercial or non-commercials sites. This is what I got at the each of the spectrum..

Two very different searches indeed. The first is non-commercial and contains sources about Terry Pratchett and nothing but. The other is commercial and it starts with Amazon and probably lists any other site that’s ever sold Pratchett’s books.

Now, why do I think it has implicatoins for search marketing? Because if you have a commercial site and try to disseminate your message using commercial goobledygook and the usual marketing speak, this kind of search will enable people to weed them out if they are looking for information and research. This puts commercial sites right out of the ‘expertise’ area and opens the door for non-commercial sites that have a lot to say about things and issues but are not trying to sell anything…  Make your own connections then.

So, if this sort of intent driven searching takes off (and it’s a big if, as Y!Mindset is in a tender beta), it will make it very crucial indeed for companies to have blogs where they can talk about themselves and engage customers on a non-commercial level. I shall be keeping my fingers crossed, of course.

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