Had to write a quick post about a post saying Branding is Dead; Long live SEO. The argument behind it is that people are now searching for the product/service they want and then follow the search results. Therefore it is assumed branding isn’t such an issue any more as people will follow the links listed highest on the search engine even if this isn’t for the actual branded company.

To me this is totally back to front. SEO is only a tool in my opinion. A very powerful tool especially when it come to that of brand awareness but a tool none the less. Branding is important online and offline but you can’t have one without the other.

So no branding is not dead, it’s fit and alive. I can’t deny that SEO however is increasingly important to protect a brand online.

The vision of the semantic web was that of Tim Berners-Lee’s - to ensure it was a universal medium for data, information and knowledge.

A noble idea, I’m just not sure this is going to be a realistic goal due to human nature’s tendency to try and exploit technologies for their own ends.

Certainly if this goal is achievable now is the right time for it to take off. There is a buzz online with regard to various technologies that can be used to achieve it (including microformats) with many proponents to semantic web cause.

The issue is that all these methods rely on correct and honest use online. In it’s simplest form the semantic web attempted to use meta tags in years go by. These became a well known method for black hat search engine optimisers to try and shoe horn inappropriate keywords into pages to try and fool the search engines. The result? Search engines generally ignore meta tags because of this easy abuse.

So is this also going to be the case for the new drive for a universal information medium? Not currently maybe. As it stands the uptake isn’t large enough so there doesn’t seem to be any advantage in trying to provide inaccurate data. But just wait until the tipping point is reached I’m sure that search engines will try to lean on this extra layer to improve results. Some people will be waiting to exploit it.

The only thing we can hope is that the lessons constantly being learnt from the constant battle against the black hats can be applied against them again to ensure this new semantic vision isn’t muddied. I also feel that social media is going to become even more of a watchdog for content quality - those millions of eyes put to good use. The advantages of the semantic web can’t be ignored - machines understanding human content opens so many doors.

As usual though the main issue here is getting people to use the technologies. From a business perspective people aren’t going to adopt this without it providing some kind of return on investment. Implementation is simple in most cases so I can perhaps see people dipping their toes in the water and this gradual adoption may start the tide. I for one will be looking at the hCalendar, hCard and XFN formats as a starting point.

I’ve read a fair bit about how social networking is going to replace search but I’ve been pretty sceptical about this so far. You have to meet my friends to understand this - we’d have trouble at a pub quiz (I’m joking guys honestly)!

Of course in actual fact it’s not the more closed social systems that this is referring to and therefore it wouldn’t just be a small group that would be suggesting how to perform open heart surgery if that’s what takes your fancy.

I can see that social networking could benefit search side by side almost acting as a checking algorithm against adverse manipulation. This already happens to a certain extent and I can only see this spread increasing. It’s is all well and good for apps like digg and del.icio.us but this has more far reaching consequences when it comes to Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Privacy issues have been highlighted a lot in the media at the moment so the data within these walls should remain private and therefore unavailable to tap into.

However imagine the power of all this hidden information if a way of anonymizing the data could take place.

I’m still interested to see the next Google and social media might well spawn it so keeps those eyes pealed maybe it might be The Mechanical Zoo which when it launches claims to be a “social search”?

In any case there are still issues here with fact, fiction and opinion. Rumours spread like wildfire on the Internet so theoretically relying on the even less formal conversations within social media sites might actually end with less accurate information returned?

Another update on the search engine wars! It seems Yahoo! is trying to jump into bed with Google to avoid the smothering embrace of Microsoft.

However with their joint market share amounting to about 90% there is no way this is going to be allowed by the powers that be and I believe not in the interest of the market as a whole. There is an excellent article on the BBC that goes into all the detail you’d need about this and I agree with every point.

Now there are rumblings that AOL might be interested in teaming up with Yahoo! and even Rupert Murdoch might team up with Microsoft for the bid for Yahoo!

Personally I think AOL and Yahoo! isn’t going to change a thing there certainly isn’t any chance of eating into Google’s share.

Yahoo! are obviously terrified to be swallowed up by Microsoft (I’m sure it would cease to exist) but I can see this as the only option if we’re not going to have a single company with a monopoly on the market. I’m not even sure if it’s too late now. Whatever Google’s reputation this isn’t good for the market and stifles innovation.