Can the google search engine become irrelevant?

Marketing
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Let’s face it, when a search for “iPhone” returns 4.2 billion possibilities on Google, no matter how fair Google wants to be to everyone, the notion of being fair is almost wishful thinking.
So then we become bloggers, we blog, we blog, and blog again, with the hope of providing useful information that matches a searcher’s queries. The Internet has somewhat become a platform of non-specific data hoping to be found/categorized by Google (and Bing).

We've noticed that a search for "iPhone" or other electronics returns the same multi-billion-dollar corporations on the first pages of Google. Their concept of fairness is: whoever is more popular/important is shown first. But is that veritably "fair"? Is it not that same catch-22 of being asked for experience when looking for your first job; or asked for credit when trying to build credit? How does the little guy see fairness faced with an At&t or a Walmart? Can the little guy, indeed, get to the first page, when specific consumer products are searched, or is it sadly an unrealistic hope? Yes, the little guy gets to the first page, had he blogged a lot, and a search for say "removing iphon battery w/out tools" were made. But where is fairness if the little guy doesn't blog?

The good thing about this fairly aged, blog-based physiognomy of the Web is that information is now everywhere. The searcher now has no shortage of information, as very useful information -- that one might have to pay for, had the categorizing pattern of the Web been different -- is being made available for free in the hope of being found. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Could Google have employed another system of listing websites? Could there be an algorithm that truly makes things fair to the little guy -- fair, meaning that his website, too, is important (because it's a business too), and not considered unimportant by Google with a PageRank of -1?

Oh well, this is the capitalist aspect or the Web!

NOTE: I looked unsuccessfully for a more appropriate forum to insert this – something that says ‘search engines’. (moderator, please move if necessary :blush:, thank you)

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[font=verdana]It’s a good question, but how do you define ‘fair’? If I search on Google for ‘iPhone’, the chances are that I am going to be most interested in the Apple website, the Wikipedia entry or the websites of major phone networks in my country … and those are the sites that come up at the top. Why would you expect anything else? Would you realistically expect any tin-pot little shop to have an equal chance of appearing at the top of the results? As a searcher, would you want it?

In my experience, Google generally does a very good job of working out which pages are likely to be the most relevant for any given search term. No, it isn’t perfect, but most of the time it is close enough. The little guy certainly can get onto the first page, as long as he isn’t competing with established big businesses and no niche specialism or USP. You don’t need to blog, you just need to have something that makes your site distinctive from, or better than, every other one out there. Google returns 3.75 billion results for ‘iPhone’, so there is obviously a lot of competition out there.

Just as your local shops have to specialise or offer some other feature to get you to shop there instead of the major supermarkets, the same is true of websites. Just as there’s no point in opening a convenience store in the shadow of a huge Walmart without having something extra to draw customers in, there’s no point in going head-to-head with AT&T selling iPhones online unless you’ve got a good few tricks up your sleeve.

As to whether Google will become irrelevant … it’s pretty much inevitable that it will happen at some point … every dominant power through history, from the Roman Empire through to AltaVista, has at some point lost its crown. At the moment, I can’t see any pretenders to the throne waiting in the wings, there are no obvious contenders who are in a position to beat Google at their own game, and that’s what it will need … someone else to become better than Google. Because for a lot of people, Google (or whatever search engine they use) is the internet. ‘Facebook’ is the most popular search term around … is that because people are too stupid to type “facebook.com” into the address line? I know some people deliberately use search rather than typing directly into the address bar because it corrects typos and spelling mistakes, and makes sure they use the right TLD, but I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who type ‘facebook’ into Google do it because they simply don’t understand about typing an address direct into the address bar.

So either some other company will have to come along and do a better job than Google, which on the current offerings doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon, or Google will have to make some major mistakes and be the source of its own downfall. I hope that won’t happen, but anything is possible.[/font]

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Hi TeleMediaMobile. Welcome to the forums. :slight_smile:

Well, there’s the problem. That’s too general a search. If you have written a blog post about a specific aspect of the iPhone, I’m sure Google will happily serve it up on the front page if it seems to correspond to a more specific search request.

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Google Becoming Irrelevant: Social Search to Own 70% of Searching by 2013

[Mod Note: Please do not copy entire articles from other sites as posts.]

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Google will never become irrelevant (assuming nothing crazy happens like in the show Revolution)

Google has spent more money on R&D than any other company in the history of companies. Rest assured that they have 100+ awesome ideas on the back burner just waiting to be polished up.

They have also done a tremendous job collecting users through Adsense/Adwords, and these people will more than likely be Google users for a very long time.

Its possible that there may be a search engine that gains popularity in America and draws attention away from Google, but it would have to offer something really special that I am not clever enough to come up with, and even if they had the 3rd most popular search engine in America, they would still be hugely relevant.

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In regards to your opening post, yes Google can become irrelevant but not in the immediate future, in my personal opinion. As stated by Stevie D in this thread a very large portion of big strong companies will lose their prominence over time. It’s just a matter of when. Looking at the power Google has at this moment with market share of around 65% for search traffic and in October taking over the top spot for worldwide email providers(per Comscore and VentureBeat) with their Gmail service, they are going to be relevant for awhile. With that being said, I do look forward to the day when another company comes along and competes with Google offering similar services that are either better or just more efficient or convenient because competition breeds innovation.