Dwarfing Giants
How to compete in the world of “billions”

Last month we talked about the doubling of the already humungous Google database, http://www.singlethrow.com/in_this_Realm.asp.  Then along comes Yahoo! this month and increases their database to a whopping 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images, and over 50 million audio and video files.

If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? It did…although not as big a sound as Google tends to make.  The big behemoth that it is - and still the ranking number one search engine as deemed by ComScore and other research companies - we all still discuss it, even months later. And await the next big “bang.”

So then what’s the big deal about Google’s 8 billion? Or even Yahoo’s almost 20 billion? The big deal is that competition is getting even more incredible – between search engines, and amongst you and your competition. And proper targeting is even more important.

Here’s a good example. Let’s say I am a painter. First question would be, “what kind of painter?” revealing answers such as, “house, oils, watercolors.” (I prefer watercolors. I’m just a hobbyist, a little something I do in my spare time.) Jumping online when I need new tools, I do a search for “paint brushes”. Lo and behold, my options are a little all over the place: brushes for house painters and other hobby brushes, which is closer to my need, but not quite there. So I try “artist brushes” thinking, “hey, I’m an artist,” yet now I also see brushes for makeup artists, too. Alas, silly me, how about “watercolor brushes.” There’s the pot of gold! All sites that meet my need…and only about 220,000 results out of Google’s 8.2 billion, whereas Yahoo had almost a million results out of their 19-plus billion.

Now I am making a decision among the different offerings. That golden list we all want to be on: when a potential customer has a need, and they are in buying mode.

Think of the things you can offer customer that your competition may not be able to: an experience that results in a success from you (a sale) and them (a purchase). The experience they have once at your website is not just about process, or product. It’s about everything. The language you use. The ease of finding what they need. It’s a lot less about price than you think! It’s really about satisfying a need.

The search engines are working hard to become number one in each users mind. The more sites and pages they can index and the better they can make their algorithms, the better the experience is for us…the more likely we are to choose one over another as our search engine of choice.