Google代替了http://
Posted | archive
转一篇我觉得很有意义的文章
http://franticindustries.com/blog/2007/01/28/google-is-the-new-http/
I’ve noticed lately that many users have all but stopped typing domain names directly in the web browser, and started using Google instead. Instead of writing “myspace.com” as the address, they write “myspace” into Google.
I’ve seen this behavior from my coworkers and friends, but it really becomes apparent when you see the top 1000 results of Google searches. Many of the top searches, like “bebo”, “ebay”, “yahoo”, “amazon”, “myspace”, “facebook”, aren’t really searches at all - these terms are mostly written by users who know exactly which page they want, but they’ve gotten used to using Google instead of the address bar. If you’re still not convinced, I give you the crown evidence: Google. One of the top search results in Google (number 6 at the time of this writing), is “Google“. Hundreds of millions of users are trying to get to Google through Google. Does this make any sense? No. But it shows that users don’t think about Google as a specific web page, they think of it as the service, an essential part of the internet experience. They’re using this service to get to the page they want: in this case, Google.
And you know what? They’re right. Google gives better results than the address bar in your web browser. Except for those hundred or so (probably less for casual internet users) addresses you know by heart, there’s a solid chance that name.com won’t be the right one. Perhaps it’s name.net, or .org. Or it’s namesomething.com, and you simply forgot about it. If you write the name of a fairly popular web site into Google’s search bar, you’re very likely to get the right result.
And not only that: In the first couple of search results, Google will probably give you the most relevant results from within the page, in many cases saving you time to browse through the actual web site. Using the address bar is simply not that effective.
What does this mean? It’s good news for Google, that’s for sure. When people think your service is an inseparable and essential part of the Internet, it’s hard for someone else to jump in. But it also means that domain names as static terms scattered across the Internet aren’t the primary way of distinguishing between different web sites any more. If people don’t use the address bar, they won’t go to the site with some exact domain name: they’ll go to the site Google deems most important for the term they’ve entered. The unlikely scenario of some site taking over the user base of a previously more popular site because of a shift in Google search results seems more and more plausible.
Google’s model of measuring hundreds of different factors, most importantly the number of links towards a web site, to establish the importance of a web site, is winning. We already know that it’s more important to have a coolname.org domain to which thousands of site link, than to have a coolname.com which noone links to, but domain names are still selling well, just because of their name. Is it worth it? If Google doesn’t already rank it high, it’s not. Take that into consideration when buying a second-hand domain name.
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