by Mike Banks Valentine copyright © 2003

The ground moves with a confusing shift sideways, followed by a bump, then a lurch and finally a massive rumbling explosion that splits the earth and swallows whatever is in its path on the surface. This happens with disturbing regularity lately and aftershocks knock formerly solid firms off their strong foundations. Infoseek, Go.com, Direct Hit and Excite collapse. Yahoo! swallows Inktomi, Overture absorbs AltaVista and Fast Search in quick succession as AskJeeves subsumed Teoma and LookSmart encircled and enclosed WiseNut in those previous SearchQuakes. The devastation is immediate and stunning to those standing on what they thought was solid ground before the quake struck and shook the searchscape beneath them.

This shifting and rumbling landscape is not a place for the timid. Search engine optimization specialists [SEO's] scan and survey the wreckage and dig through the resulting rubble to find the surviving strategies that will pull their clients to the top of search results and out of that rubble to the surface. There is often a dazed stillness that follows such natural disasters while survivors sort out what to do now that everything has changed with one sweeping event. SEO's are rescue workers on scene clearing debris and rebuilding.

Admittedly, it's not all that dramatic for most small to medium sized businesses on the web. But it does mean that they need a professional on the case for them keeping them abreast of changes. The earthquake analogy probably only applies to those deeply involved in web business, almost as though web businesses live on the other side of the planet from the disastrous shift in the search landscape - jerking portal partnerships and often disastrously disturbing other industry alliances that had settled into working relationships.

Everyone is nervously checking to see if any damage is done to their own partnerships and who may be injured?

Unlike earthquakes, searchquakes seem to occur with reasons, but still tend to be unexpected and sudden. Directories buy up crawler-based search engines in order to have an in-house solution to provide backup results when unable to provide results from the directory database. Overture's pay-per-click engine now provides PPC results to organic [free] search engines. Everyone wonders what effect their purchases may have on existing partnerships Overture maintains with search sites that previously saw themselves as competitors to both of these acquisition targets, Fast/AllTheWeb and AltaVista.

Existing partners are beginning to fret that Overture is threatening their territory of crawler-based search. Yahoo! stated in their press release that the paid inclusion facet of Inktomi was attractive and contributed to that purchase. The paid inclusion facets of both AltaVista and FastSearch through it's partnership with Lycos are now part of Overture. Yahoo! paid $235 million for Inktomi. Overture will spend about that amount for both of it's acquisitions combined. So we are looking at deals in the search industry of nearing one-half billion dollars! Rarefied territory above the valley of Search Mountain!

Google previously provided back-up results to Yahoo! and now may be dropped as a search partner due to the perception that they are becoming competitors with PPC and Shopping search. MSN looks warily at Inktomi wondering whether they might be a threat. Indeed, MSN might be the only search provider that has failed to swallow competitors in an odd twist that leaves them with little to offer outside their partnerships. MSN dropped their support of RealNames, and essentially killed them and even though new so-called 'Navigational Keyword' competition is heating up with players iGetNet.com, NetWord.com and UDDI.org - the paid navigation schemes are like bubbling mudpots compared to volcanic activity of the webs' biggest search properties. For more on these tiny geysers and mudpots, view Danny Sullivan's articles below.

http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/02/06-realnames.html
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/02/10-namespaces.html

It will be interesting in the long term though, as each engine buys up competing services to become more independent. Will any of those search properties need each other when every one of them have their own paid inclusion, pay-per-click, shopping search, news search, image search, blogger search, directory, financial channel, auto channel, auction channel, music channel, etc. Aren't they headed back toward the mostly failed portal model that commentators are pointing to for the reason AltaVista failed, the reason Yahoo! wobbles under its own sheer size and weight, the reason they each had for becoming more like Google?

Meanwhile, Google purchased Blogger recently in a move that many search industry pundits are still analyzing for its effect on the web landscape. Whatever the result, one thing is quite apparent in the shifting and eroding scenery of search engines.

The conclusion can only be that search matters on the web. It matters to all businesses that require visibility in the ever narrowing canyons and soaring peaks of the search landscape.

Just like the natural disaster of earthquakes, it all seems so senseless sometimes. We'll all dust off and move on now. But you've got to wonder if there's an end in sight to the ever shifting territorial lines in this treacherous SearchQuake ridden terrain.