A History of Internet Search and Google

“Ten years ago, there was no Google, fifteen years ago, there was no search,” begins John Heileman’s 45 minute 3 YouTube videos about the history of search. (Discovery Science) How we got to where we are, the foundation of social media.

I found this through Watch This Documentary: The History of Internet Search and Google blog post by Stephen Chapman, SEO Whistleblower, ZDNet.

What I found useful in each section

The History of Internet Search and Google - Part 1

Yahoo – manual indexing, categorizing, and curating (when there were 100,000 websites) Initiated banner advertising.

Excite – Crawl the web for the words the user requested. Not mentioning John Battelle’s Database of Intentions  

Initiated  the idea of ads as search results.Selling and presenting ads became the norm for search results, forgot about search.

The History of Internet Search and Google - Part 2

Google – Their different premise, that links are a recommendation of  website value. Led to a search engine that cared about search again. Started without an idea of how to make money.

The History of Internet Search and Google - Part 3

Where Google found the idea of their ads. Improved on the idea of selling and providing ads focused on search terms. Features John Battelle.

I really appreciated the video and graphics that played with Heileman’s narrative. Somebody was working hard to make the most of video format. 

Comments?

Other presentations you might enjoy:
Talk Your Business - How to make more and better sales right away! Wednesday, November 10th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville, and
How to Scale Your Organization - Build, Borrow, or Buy? Thursday, December 9th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville
http://www.saleslabdc.com/leadership

Why Websites Suck

Guy Kawasaki has a post reviewing Gerry McGovern's The Stranger’s Long Neck: How to Deliver What Your Customers Really Want Online.

Three useful ideas from Guy's post:

There is always a key task users come to the site to do. That is especially good for me this week, as last weekend I realized most visitors to the Sales Lab site want to know the date and place of our next free show. So I made a new, high priority link in the navigation.

Guy makes the point that internal users often don't know that task, and that is easily observable watching real users. Seen that.

Designers don't see the offer as users do. The traditional first step is collecting all the things we might do. The profitable (and later) process is to find out what the customers want to do, and refine the website so it is easier and easier to do. Redesign means losing your baseline and starting over. Websites get better, not finished.

Internal power plays keep website as billboard. Even as the mind accepts that a good website is a transactional website, the heart says I need placement on our website to make sure I'm not losing anything.

Communication is not "not losing." Communication design is putting something out that wins customers.

When I was selling COBOL, a 50 year old product, at one point I made a conscious decision to change my marketing focus every 60 days, like a cosmetic or other consumer non-durable - “COBOL to the web”, “GUI COBOL”, “Putting Lipstick On The Pig, where COBOL is going and why.” The result was sales increased, but customers were still buying what they needed, not what I was selling. I had mindshare as they were deciding to buy.

So, why do you think websites suck? 

Other presentations you might enjoy:
Talk Your Business - How to make more and better sales right away! Wednesday, November 10th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville, and
How to Scale Your Organization - Build, Borrow, or Buy? Thursday, December 9th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville
http://www.saleslabdc.com/leadership

One Clear Idea - Great Support

I was fortunate to attend Tony Mayo’s wonderful presentation Whole Brain Leadership at the Leadership Breakfast.

His content was superb, and go see his show when you have a chance. You will be changed for the better. Can’t be helped.

The best lesson for me was about his presentation.

He had one very clear idea. Not an easy idea or an especially attractive idea, but one sharp focus. He spent his hour showing the benefit in a variety of ways, mental, intellectual, theoretical, experiential, physical, heroic, and humorous. Whatever way anyone in the audience needed to learn it, Tony was providing.

Many presentations, even when they are over, I’m not clear what the presenter wanted me to know. Often, the whole presentation has a subtext that this ain’t gonna work. They have one path for presentation and often generate more heat than light.

Tony Mayo wanted everyone to believe, so he cut his idea to a bare minimum, and then did everything he could to make it bright and wonderful. Works.