After the news that Chrome has moved to secure search, I can’t say that I’m unhappy. Aside from padding my illusion of there being more online privacy, I welcome this change mainly for one reason: Parity.
Leveling the Playing Field
I am excited for this change for the same reason I appreciate the play of Justine Henin-Hardenne, Damian Lillard, andDavid Eckstein. Who are they? you ask. Well they are three professional athletes, who compete at the top level of their sport, not because of their physical stature or god-given talent but because their determination and work ethic to improve.
Maria Sharapova and Justine Henin-Hardenne face off at the 2006 US Open Final. Photo from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/5330844.stm
The implications of Google’ secure search decision, without going into detail of how (see the link), means that webmasters and marketers will have less information from which to base their targeting efforts. In an effort provide just a little more privacy to its users, Google Chrome has disconnected the where (search term that brought them to a specific site) from the what, how and essentially who (their behavior on that site) that allows us to use analytics to essentially segment the populations of our inbound traffic and create profiles about people and target them in our marketing efforts.
What Does This Mean For The Underdog?
Dwight Howard, Mark Mcgwire, and Serena Williams just got a little bit smaller. You have to understand my bias here. My agency represents the Justine Henin-Hardennes of the hotel world. We compete in search engine rankings pages with the likes of Marriott Sharapova, Venus and Serena Hiltons and… Crowne Plazniaki; hotels that operate on an entirely different analytic scale. With this disconnect of information these analytical freaks of nature, (or otherwise) are scaled to more human size.
In the modern era of Search Engine Optimization/Marketing (SEO/SEM) the advantage is given to those who can make more detailed and accurate decisions based on analytics and testing of larger data sets. These new Google restrictions essentially shrink the size and detail of our competitors’ data sets. Whereas both my clients and our competitors have been subject to the same disadvantage, our competitors, will have a scalable disadvantage as they have been spoiled by the quantity of data that they manage which in turn has set them in their simple test and tweak ways. Anyone with enough consistent user data can throw something at the SEO wall and see if it sticks. The new advantage will be given to the competitor who is best able to: 1. Recognize what relationships exist, 2. Refine information from the remaining information channels into actionable data, 3. Creates accurate tests for better iterative results and 4. creates websites that intrinsically provide a great user experience.
The new advantage, the same as the oldest advantages, is a matter of the pursuit of quality of intellect and skill by asking why and how. At Zoom Creates we love the why. The Why is why we will adapt and find a relative advantage in this perceived disadvantage.
It’s Wednesday and officially Hungry Hump Day in the office. Hungry Hump Day has been a long-standing tradition at Zoom. We celebrate each middle of the week morning most commonly with bagels and smear as well as the occasional doughnut bonanza. Our hump day treat accompanies our mid-week, all staff morning meeting and makes it a delightful way to start the day.
