Landing Page Magic

Google have recently updated one of their patents with a likely view of launching a new product that will have a profound implications on the publishing and the e-commerce industry. The product will identify search-content gaps throughout the long tail of search topics.

What will the “Inadequate Search Content” Patent Technology Do?

The technology will identify search topics that have been poorly addressed by online publishers, bloggers, content aggregators and user generated content. The technology will provide a weighting based on the volume and quality of content associated to a search topic VS. the volume of search for that topic.

How will the “Inadequate Search Content” Patent work?

It will collect information around a search topic including:
– The relevance of content relating to that topic (Google calls it the Information Retrieval Score)
– The Node Rank of those search results (similar to Page Rank)
– The Click Through Rate on those search results
– The length of time a user spends reviewing the search results
– The volume of search traffic relating to that search topic

The Google “Statistics Collection and Analysis Engine” will then allow process this data to provide a weighting that will not only identify topics of inadequate content but also topics of adequate content.

Who will use the “Inadequate Search Content” technology?

Google will look to make money out of this technology. It will generate money in 2 ways:

1. Businesses will want access to “Inadequate Search Content” and also “Over Adequate Search Content” Topics and Data

The types of business that will want this data will include:

– Online Publishers, so they can know what to write about or what NOT to write about. An example might be for a major newspaper group, who wants to focus some of their editorial away from areas that have a lot of content to topics that need addressing.

– Online Retailers, so they can identify areas of products to sell and NOT sell. The example that Google use is “purple alligator leather belts”. They may be lots of people searching but if there aren’t many products serving that search topic then retailers can know to stock them.

– Print Publishers, so they can identify new topics to write about. The example that Google use is “Biography of Millard Fillmore”. If there are decent search volumes for this, but few results then why not get a book commissioned to fill this gap.

2. Google will release a tool to allow searchers to generate content, around topics where there is no or little quality content

Google will likely have an add content function within their search results that will allow users to potentially aggregate or create content.

Who will be affected by this technology?

This most profound implication this technology will bring, is to make the Internet a better place as more quality content and products will be created to address the longtail.

Therefore searchers will benefit from better quality Internet content and products relating to what they are searching for.

Online publishers which address the long tail of content by aggregating, mashing and producing low quality content will likely suffer, as better content comes online.

This technology could potentially be a God send to newspapers and magazines who often aren’t very well versed in SEO, as it will allow them to start focusing editorial on areas where there is a search-content gap.

The likes of Yahoo’s Associated Content, AOL’s seed.com, About.com and DemandMedia have been using their own versions of this technology for years. Their content is likely to have a lot more competition as other publishers start using Google’s tools.

However it will become harder for them to sell their technology to other publishers when the Behemoth Google enters the fray. Google’s data will be better than anything they can get their hands on, so it will be unlikely their solutions will be able to perform as well as Google’s. That said they all have a good head start on Google, and they could potentially use Google’s data and their own freelance networks.

DemandMedia’s Richard Rosenblatt should try to IPO before Google get this technology out.