I think I understand what you mean.

IMHO, you can rest assured that the novices using Google to help them find a life insurance policy will most likely first brag to their peers that they have found the “cheapest” offer for life insurance when using Google.

If they find their information at a “reputable” address (e.g. an “insurance” domain — and no, I do not mean “lifeinsurance” [as "lifeinsurance" is not actually a word]), then they can most likely rest assured that they will not be disappointed (since otherwise the very high value of the domain name could easily be ruined — at least for the short / medium term) — but perhaps many will later find out that they have actually “fallen for” some gimmick.

Few people have a very good understanding of how information retrieval (“search”) works — and an understanding of these processes has fundamentally changed how marketing and advertising works.

At the moment, many people actually do believe that Google has figured out something like a “magical formula” that will always provide the “best answer” for every question. Since I commonly track the behavior of very young Internet users, I know that are very results oriented — and they quickly revise their methodologies if something doesn’t seem to work. And I see that they are very communicative regarding “what works” vs. “what doesn’t work” — so I agree with Mr. Battelle that an information retrieval system which invites participation (or “engagement“) — e.g. as with digg.com show the greatest promise (I worked on similar sites before digg.com launched — and they were indeed very successful [but at that times they were still too small to survive the dot crash of 2001]). In contrast, Google (though it was originally based on such participation) has become a very closed and cryptic organization (which guards the information it collects as if it were “top secret” [or at any rate a "trade secret"]) — in the long run, this will not lead to the best results (but they are earning alot of money from advertisers who believe that it might work well).

I feel you should rest assured that the dot com crash has not yet happened. Far more than 99% of all .COM registrations are worth virtually nothing whatsoever. If you are smart, you will guide your company to register a valuable domain name while relatively cheap domain names are still available. If you like, you can click though to a contact form and send me a message.

Finally, the particular algorithms that google.com (or other google search configurations) use(s) may indeed be rather quirky. You are right in your analysis that google’s algorithms seem rather skewed towards old (and perhaps even outdated) information. That is why advanced users will tend to use “insurance” sites (sites focused on “insurance” — i.e. an “insurance” domain) to search for information related to insurance (and therefore according to search methodolgies that make more sense in this context than e.g. in the context of searching for a music video or something like that).

I hope this is helpful for you — and please do not hesitate to contact me if you think I might be able to further help you in any way whatsoever.

nmw

The fact that the “natural language” domains you mention are among the highest ranked domains for people seeking information about “life insurance” has more to do with what I refer to as the “Wisdom of the Language” (in this case: English). What is important to recognize is that people seek to find information about “insurance” — that string is (if you will) a term that has been “branded“ over a period several centuries (indeed: actually several millenia). That will not change overnight, and it will also not change for a long time — regardless of what Google may do or not do.

“Content” and “Non-Content” need to be clearly defined. The way I see it, algorithms are also content. Not that Google actually uses algorithms — we should all know better since the “miserable failure” fiasco. And even if Google DID use algorithms, that is hardly to say that Google’s algorithms are any better at finding a car than cars.com or at finding a hotel than hotels.com or at finding a pizza than pizza.com.

see also my comment on a recent businessweek.com article:

http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/combo_review?action=getComment&productId=29633&reviewId=248840#248840

I’ve worked as a copywriter and content developer for some of the companies mentioned in this article. My concern is that Yahoo! is making the same mistake AOL made when it bought Time Warner.

AOL had a solid business as an ISP and point of entry for newcomers to the internet. Then it decided content was the play, and it got into the money pit of trying to be a content provider and a tech company.

Google has avoided the minefield of media by going for tech. Yahoo! is trying to be a tech company like google, and a content provider, and that takes a lot of work. Legions of writers, editors, and reviewers who write content that other folks are happy to post on their blogs for free is a tough task. I can’t see them managing it profitably.

I’m looking forward to part two of the article.

In the 21st Century, maybe branding expertise really doesn’t matter. The executive firings will likely continue until all the “branding experts” from a bygone era are purged from these organizations, and pragmatists with customer-centric savvy replace them.

Dave

But, now that they consumers don’t have to watch the 30 second spots anymore, they don’t want to watch content about a new lite beer no matter how entertaining (they’d rather see a whale exploding online). They also don’t want to read Twitter posts about soap.

This makes the job a lot harder. Today’s CMOs and ad agencies were raised in a world where you could buy buzz. You can’t really do that online. You can if you accompany the campaign by a $50M TV buy but that leaves a lot of folks crying at the party. That’s why CMOs turn over pretty fast these days, the old formula doesn’t work.

I don’t know the components of the new formula. I think the reality is that, the simple world of big push is largely gone. And, I think the efforts of branders to use Hulu and other efforts will work to a degree but it’ll be a very distant and ugly cousin to the glory days of $3 million 30 second spots.

It makes me a little sad — I love the advertising and brand world. It is a cool and funky place. But, it — and big media — are in real trouble online.