Search Engine Marketing
Desktop Search
Google’s release of its new Desktop Search service made an already hot topic in the search community even hotter!
What is Desktop Search? Ever try finding that KEY Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation on YOUR own hard drive, and come up empty?! Who hasn’t?!
How about trying to search for a specific email by using a single name or phrase? Impossible? Not any more!
Google Desktop Search allows you to search your PC hard drive as easily, efficiently and as quickly as you currently search the Web. If you’ve read about Search Engine Optimization in this Internet Marketing Course, you know that what these search engines really “search” is a database index compiled by having their search engine “spiders” crawl millions/billions of Web pages on a regular basis. And that’s the same concept that’s used in Desktop Search – a spider crawls specific types of content on YOUR PC’s hard drive, creates a “database” of that content, indexes that database, and then returns links to content based on the searches you perform.
Just for the fun of it, Google’s release of Desktop Search also marks the REAL beginning of the long anticipated search war between Google, the king of Web search, and Microsoft, the king of everything else!
For over a year, Microsoft has been dropping broad hints about the “integrated” (Web and desktop) search environment its new operating system, code named “Longhorn”, would offer users. Then, less than a year ago, it became evident that Microsoft would a) not be able to deliver this all-encompassing operating system with all of its features, including desktop search, on time, and b) made it clear that it was going to offer its own crawler-based search technology via its MSN Web portal in direct competition with Google in order to grab a significant share of the sponsored search ad revenue that’s shown explosive growth over the last 18 months.
Google has trumped Microsoft with its release of Google Desktop Search (Beta Edition). Google has taken its incredibly relevant search results magic, applied it to YOUR hard drive, and fully integrated it with its already wildly popular Web search service. And it’s all Free! And it beat Microsoft at its own game!
Here’s what Google tells potential users about its desktop search service:
“Google Desktop Search is how our brains would work if we had photographic memories. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, chats, and the web pages you’ve viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop Search puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails, and bookmarks.
After downloading Google Desktop Search, you can search your personal items as easily as you search the Internet using Google. Unlike traditional computer search software that updates once a day, Google Desktop Search updates continually for most file types, so that when you receive a new email in Outlook, for example, you can search for it within seconds. The index of searchable information created by Desktop Search is stored on your own computer.
In addition to basic search, Google Desktop Search introduces new ways to access relevant and timely information. When you view a web page in Internet Explorer, Google Desktop Search “caches” or stores its content so that you can later look at that same version of the page, even if its live content has changed or you’re offline. Google Desktop Search organizes email search results into conversations, so that all email messages in the same thread are grouped into a single search result.”
Click on this link to review the Google Desktop Search FAQ:
Google Desktop Search Features
I downloaded Google Desktop Search, installed it in seconds, and used it for most of the day. It really is a cool tool to have on your PC!
The feature I like best is the way it integrates seamlessly with the standard Google Web search page. I spend a lot of my work day on the Web, and I use Google as my primary Web search tool. Now I have a quick and easy way to ALSO search what’s on my hard drive for the same search phrase I’m researching on the Web. It lets me search ALL aspects of my electronic knowledge base simultaneously for that particular thought or concept.
Other major and second tier search engines are supposedly working feverishly to offer their users the same capability, so Desktop Search is only going to get bigger.
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What do YOU have to do as a Web marketer to take advantage of this new Desktop Search concept?
For now, I recommend that you download the application and give it a try. Get used to it, experience its potential for simplifying and integrating ALL of your electronic information.
What’s probably coming on the FREE Google Desktop Search results pages are what you already see on the FREE Google Web Search results pages – sponsored search results – aka ads! Privacy advocates are already warning about what it would take to serve relevant ads based on hard drive searches performed with an application like Google Desktop Search, but where there’s a will there’s a way!
Actually, if most Google Desktop Search end-users implement the service the way I did (searching the Web and my PC simultaneously for the same search phrase), they will be served relevant sponsored ads on the initial Web/PC search results page just the way they are now when they do a Google Web-only search. These ads come from the Google AdWords program.
And here’s a potential sponsored search results scenario that could work even if the the PC owner chose to do Web and PC hard drive searches separately – pay the computer Owner a portion of the ad revenue to allow relevant sponsored search results to be displayed on the search results pages for his/her computer. How would that work? There’s already a successful model for this type of sponsored search results advertising – contextual advertising – Google’s version is called AdSense. A good example of AdSense can be seen on this Web site – the ads being served in the RIGHT Column of this Web page, and almost every Web page on this Web site, are provided by Google. Once I applied to and was accepted into the Google AdSense program, Google crawled and indexed this Web site. The ads displayed on a specific Internet Marketing Course Web page are determined by Google’s relevancy ranking of that page for specific search phrase. The ads come from Google’s Adwords program. (To learn more about the Google AdSense Program, click on this link.)
I’m not saying this last scenario is without potential pitfalls for BOTH the provider of Desktop Search and the PC owner, but the KEY event that is occurring in this scenario – the owner of content is being paid to position advertising with that content when it’s displayed – is the KEY event that occurs in ALL forms of advertising. So why not bring relevant ads to the individual level, and base the display of that ad on content relevant to that specific individual?
Stay tuned! In the meantime, you’ll have a much easier time finding your email, computer files, chats, and the Web pages you’ve viewed.
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