by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
Search engine optimization is Web 2.0 - it's official! In fact, even in the original O'Reilly brainstorm cost per click, Google AdSense, blogging and tagging were all "Web 2.0".Andrew Girdwood
It is not uncommon to hear the cry of "Let's do something Web 2.0", but many traditional marketers are yet to fully understand what Web 2.0 is. Web 2.0 is not a new technology. Web 2.0 is not a new set of rules. Web 2.0 is an idea, it is, fundamentally, the concept that the World Wide Web has evolved since the dot-com bubble of 2001.
A core of Web 2.0 is the idea that the Web is a platform. Not an advertising platform, but a platform where users control their own data and from which scalable services are offered. Web 2.0 is about services rather than packaged software and it is about offerings compatible with many devices (mobile phones, portable gaming consoles, different internet browsers, etc).
Tim O'Reilly runs through the original Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0 list in his infamous "What is Web 2.0" article of 2005. If we look at the original list we can see that many of the Web 2.0 ideas have not quite managed the Darwinistic coup d'etat expected. At least: not yet.
BitTorrent was lined up as an evolution of Akamai and if we were to look at the virtual landscape again today that seems unlikely. Akamai provides bandwidth to the likes of Google. And, while the search engine may be trying to become less dependant on that service, it is not taking the BitTorrent route.
Syndication was the Web 2.0 evolution of Stickiness. Stickiness is the attribute web sites have which encourage people to stay on them and not to flee via the first hyperlink or back button. In web marketing and web design stickiness is as important as it ever has been.
Search engine optimization was there to replace domain name speculation. Search engine optimization has evolved significantly further than that. Domain name speculation ebbed away to almost nothing...although at the start of August the domain name wiki.com was sold for nearly $3 million to John Gotts of Searching.com. A trip to Searching.com's beta home page brings up the phrase "Web2.0 beta" in the welcome box. It could just be that as mainstream media perks up their interest in Web 2.0 that domain name speculation rises with it.
Napster was cited as a replacement for MP3.com. Hmm: well!
Many might say that we have moved past the 2001 style of music download site that Napster represented at the time, pre-dating the web 2.0 furore. And yes - some people are now talking about Web 3.0!
When professionals talk about Web 2.0 today they tend to be talking about interactivity on a site (ironically, this tends to make the site more sticky - that Web 1.0 concept).
A prime candidate for interactivity on a site is AJAX. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and the search engine Google uses it a lot. Gmail (or Google Mail for those of us in the UK) lets you open or close threads of email conversations without reloading the page. That's an example of AJAX. Pages respond and change to user interaction. Google gives away an AJAX toolkit to make it easier to build pages with it. Here's the catch - AJAX is rarely search engine friendly. Google may use AJAX but Googlebot is not one to actually use JavaScript, especially when it might be submitting data (which AJAX sites tend to do).
User generated content (or "participation" in Web 2.0 terms) is increasingly common. 'Content is King' is a truism in SEO, and it is here that we find the "social" side of the web. MySpace is entirely user generated content: MySpace, YouTube, Digg.com and Wikipedia are all about users being in control of the data.
It is precisely sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Digg.com and Wikipedia which are helping to fuel the rise of the internet and Web 2.0. Rarely a day goes by without one of those sites, or similar, being discussed in mainstream media.
Gartner's "emerging technologies hype cycle" which looks at new technologies and predicts a pattern of hype, disillusionment, and adoption has concluded that Web 2.0 will have a significant impact on businesses over the next ten years.
Here's the prediction - Web 2.0 will come to a site near you. Soon.
