It’s like anything that is extremely profitable—everyone wants to try the same and be just as successful. And so it is with the future and internet search engines. Other enterprises want to be just as successful as the internet search engine leader Google but in order to do that, they have to figure out how to do some special thing better. These are niche internet search engines and they try to focus on specialization strengths rather than doing it all. Let’s look at these niche internet search engines and the future of internet search engines a little more:
Google is still a strong leader in the near future. Unless someone comes up with a dramatic change in the way internet search engines like Google work, it will probably remain the leader for some time to come. It has a strong framework built to search internet-wide and an established base of Adwords and Adsense clients that will not be disappearing any time soon.
Then there is Microsoft’s attempt to take over Yahoo. Although this last bid by Microsoft to do a hostile takeover of Yahoo is over for now, one can never be too certain that this will not be attempted again except from a different angle. One thing for certain is that in the future you will more than likely see some business through mergers try to dethrone the king of the hill Google. Google is discussing options with Yahoo since the hostile bid fell through concerning an advertising partnership but nothing is for certain yet.
There is an emergence of search engines specifically for the social networking scene. The popular thing to do now and probably for the future is the social networking thing. People like to blog, post on forums, set up their MySpace accounts, and basically make all sorts of chatter, share music, and videos on the internet. That is the idea behind Twing.com. It is to search only forums, topics (within forums), and posts (also within forums). Twing’s database is still growing however. Another social networking search engine that is out to change the future of internet search engines is Sightix.com. Sightix.com uses a methodology where people’s social profiles (or graph they call it) are used in producing relevant search results.
Could there be more “niche” search engines in the future? They are not out to overtake Google. They are only out to be the best internet search engine within their niche. These are search engines that are specifically to find blogs, forums, maps, medical information, jobs, audio, and video. The idea is to have the most up-to-date and comprehensive search database specifically for the site’s specification. For example, there is the niche internet search engine Topix.net. How many times have you gone to the internet and searched on world news and local news and had to go to two different websites? Topix.net is a search engine specifically for news and so it has access to hundreds of sources from different newsfeeds and combines all into one page.
Expect in the future to see internet search engines become more sophisticated with mobile technology. People will continue to be mobile and unable to be in front of a computer all the time. One of the reasons why Microsoft wanted to take over Yahoo was because the Yahoo search engine has made significant progress in leveraging mobile technology. Being able to search for news, maps, and local information all from a handheld mobile device should become increasingly popular in the future.
Tags: future, search engines
