Is Google No. 1 Forever?

[thejenn]

Authored by: Jim Hedger

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/hedger/007222.html

A Snippet:

Having been the engine of choice for nearly five years, Google is synonymous with search. Because Google is the first thing most folks think of when they think about search, it is the most important search marketing venue, at least for the vast majority of SEOs.

[Novice user]

When you want to make a copy on a copier, you say you want to make a "Xerox," even if you're using another brand of copier. When you researched something on the internet, you say "I Googled it," even if you used Yahoo to do the research. "Xerox" and "Google" instantly convey meaning. They're here to stay.

[copyclubweb]

That is correct for the people who only speak one language. In this case English. But not for those who speak more than one language other than English.

[vangogh]

I don't think we can say Google will be #1 forever the same way we can't say that for any company in any industry. At some point someone will probably come up with either a better algorithm or better marketing or maybe Google will just drop the ball in a way they can't quite recover from.

At the moment though they're certainly #1 and their market share has been growing. Googling is becoming synonymous with searching so they will be hard to knock off the top.

I've always preferred using Google, though I can't really say the results at Google are any more relevant than the other search engines. I've always found what I want though and they haven't given me any reason to switch. As a webmaster and someone who knows a little about how different search engines determine what site is relevant to a search I do think Google has the right idea even if it means it will be harder to get my site to show up in results.

It will be interesting to see where the search industry goes in the coming years. The industry is really still in its infancy and I'm sure the coming years will see a lot of innovation in how the various search engines determine relevance to a given query.

[Matt McGee]

Originally Posted by Novice user

When you want to make a copy on a copier, you say you want to make a "Xerox," even if you're using another brand of copier. When you researched something on the internet, you say "I Googled it," even if you used Yahoo to do the research. "Xerox" and "Google" instantly convey meaning. They're here to stay.

True, but is Xerox the No. 1 copy machine company? (I have no clue, actually!)

Point is, even though Xerox = making copies, Xerox may not be the No. 1 company in that field. We may continue to "google" something even if Google isn't the No. 1 search engine.

[vangogh]

That is true Matt and I suspect that we'll be googling regardless of whether it's at Google or some other search engine What Google has at the moment is a very strong market share and while not impossible it will be difficult to knock them off the top of the mountain in the near future.

Difficult, but not impossible. A lot will depend on how well Google can maintain their advantage and how well the other search engines work to improve their produce and the perception of their product.

We may not always be googling at Google, but they have a very big lead at the moment and even without doing much they should be able to hold onto that lead for awhile.

[Matt McGee]

That's true, they're in good shape at the moment.

Ask seems to be gaining a little momentum of late, with some positive mentions from prominent sources/names.

I also saw an incredibly effective ad for Ask last night -- it was a Flash-based ad. Wish I had saved the URL. Anyway, it showed what were obviously Google's SERPs scrolling very, very quickly -- you couldn't NOT look at this ad. And then it faded into a message touting the Ask tools, and how you can do more with Ask's SERPs, etc. Very effective, I thought.

[vangogh]

I've been meaning to check out Ask more. I've only seen the TV commercials for now, but if you find that Flash add again defintiely post the url.

I like to think Google has the most relevant results since I use it pretty much exclusively, but I have a hunch most of the search engines are close to being equally relevant, or at least more so than the the number of users would indicate.

I actually like Google's simple interface though I wish their navigation was easier for other things besides the search. I'm sure Ask is using a simple interface due to Google's