Last week I fielded predictable set of questions from the media about the impact of Google entering the blog search space. Shankar Gupta's MediaPost piece nicely captured my (and Intelliseek's) general take on the issue, especially around the implications for Intelliseek's BlogPulse, but that's hardly the driver behind this post. What's surprised me most about all the Google+Blog Search coverage is that the most obvious point was all but neglected. Traffic to blogs is likely to surge as a result of Google actively promoting the blogophere, and many sites will see two to three times increases in overall traffic, that's a very big deal. I frankly think that's a conservative estimate.
Google Mushrooms Blogophere? For perspective, Google is not only the world's biggest search engine, but it's web's most impactful traffic cop. As soon as it starts prominently featuring a blog search button on the home page, expect to see no less than 5-10% of incremental traffic directed toward blogs. A good reference point here is to look at Google traffic stats on Alexa. Here you can see that 20% of all Google traffic goes to Google content areas other than basic search: images, for example, receives 7% of all traffic. Given growing global curiosity over all things blog-related, couple with Google front-page promotion, I can't image blogs receiving any less on the search front than Google Images.
Speakers versus Seekers: Since writing my first white paper on CGM, I've maintained that CGM has the greatest impact thanks to search engines. Most CGM content, in fact, especially blog content, is discovered via search. Outspoken CGM-creators ("speakers") create content that ultimately finds targeted reach among curious users of search engines ("seekers"). This content ultimately competes against "paid" advertising on the search results. What Google is essentially doing is turbocharging the "Speakers versus Seekers" marketplace, acting as marriage broker between consumers with unmet needs ("I seek") and targeted blog results. On the marketing front, this will create both opportunities and challenges for brands. Indeed, the jump from general web content to blog-only content when conducting a search can be both humbling and humiliating for some brands. Bloggers, on the other hand, will rejoice in being discovered and recognized by millions of new websurfers. Some bloggers are already detecting increases.
Pete, excellent observation as usual. Google was already my biggest referrer. Because Google's web search indexed blogs with some favor (due to the dynamic nature of blogs I guess) they were already sending lots of traffic my way. I have seen Google blog search show up quite a bit lately. My point is that Google was already good to bloggers and now they're even better. (Now if ythey could just police the splogs on Blogger, we'd be doing alright!)
The interesting thing to me here is that in order for people to do a Google blog search, they have to be aware of blogs and what they are - and then want to search in them explicitly. In a few weeks, after the hoopla settles, if Google blog searches outnumber regular Google searches in our logs it might be an indicator that people are intentionally tuning out commercial advertisement/infomercial sites. If so, you might just be on to something with this whole CGM thing .
-Matt
Posted by: Matt Galloway | September 19, 2005 at 01:46 PM
"The interesting thing to me here is that in order for people to do a Google blog search, they have to be aware of blogs and what they are" - actually, interesting - this brings me to the opposite conclusion: as Google starts shifting blogs out of the regular search and into the dedicated blogsearch, less and less traffic will be driven to the blogs! Precisely because it takes a particular awareness of the specifics of blogs and what they are about, which - at least in Europe - most users do not have.
Simply put: today, everybody knows and uses Google, and the blogs are featured prominently among the regular results on Google. That drives traffic. Tomorrow, Google will have taught its regular search to avoid Blogs, because that's what hence the blogsearch is for, isn't it? So the regular user ("I'm 'onna look it up on Google quick!") who does not dig deep enough into the amazing world of Web 2.0, because he is (possibly rightly so!) interested in other things, will simple find less and less blogs.
Or is my thinking flawed?
Posted by: Martin Oetting | September 21, 2005 at 03:13 AM