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Now there's a blast from the past, when AltaVista was a bigboy, and Google was a fledgling start up.

There's a good send off and timeline from Search Engine Land:
A Eulogy For AltaVista, The Google Of Its Time

Broad answer is simply online marketing, from organic (SEO), PPC to SMM.

You are thanking me over 12 months after I posted?

Consider yourself on notice Mr RyanPatrick sir, post counting and low quality posts end up with a ban....

Now prove us wrong

Wahey a wingman

I don't doubt Semantic search will eradicate web spam, as you say web spam will evolve. How Google deals with this I guess could be the next big battleground.


Don't forget we are at the beginning of the journey. But currently, if you have a blog that talks about the challenges of small business, how do you get on to page 1? How do you compete with the likes of business.com or entreprenuer.com or the multitude of other small business advice sites/forums/blogs.

Now how about if you are deemed to be a respected/knowledgeable small business expert? If a Google Carousel panel made up of article summaries from various respected small business websites has replaced the traditional search index, then it's down to how the user interprets the summaries and decides where to go, hopefully your site.

Now how you get summaries into the Google knowledge graph via schema.org other than a site description, I've yet to work out, and who decides if you are a knowledgeable expert? I suspect this will be powered from Google+ profiles, and community participation, but thats just a bit of cynical speculation.

As for all the other problems, I'm guessing the babel one is probably the hardest although Google Translate does seem to do a better job than earlier attempts.

I suspect we are in for a long and interesting journey

absolutely amazing! Not even a safety line.

The missus loved the fact he turned up in an old pair of jeans

I second that. For online business, things can happen and change very quickly. Most people have 2 or 3 competitors they are aware of. By monitoring these, you can understand how they have reacted (or not) to new changes. Maybe they've rebranded, or changed direction? If so, then why? What do they know that you don't, has it worked for them? Maybe they've dropped the ball, in which case learn from them and avoid similar mistakes.

So I agree, it's essential. There are a variety of tools out there, depending on your type of business, but google alerts is a quick and easy one to set up. After that, it's down to personal preference, and if you are willing to pay for a subscription for more advanced tools, or stick with freeware ones.

Glad you guys like it

God is still hating me, and am still crook, but emergency goatee seems to work

You finally shaken off that bronchitis Sami?

There you go, updated it!

I think the Google EMD update last year probably sunk the market a bit, but if there's a particular URL you are after, then it's worth holding out.

I wanted mylocalservices.com back in 2006 but it had a US site on it, and they weren't interested in selling. When we launched MLS in the US, I had to buy mylocalservices.us but periodically kept asking the .com owners if they wanted to sell up. Then last year they finally agreed, and I got it for $1k. It was more vanity, I really wanted the URL, rather it being worth megabucks. But just goes to show, you can wear people down