Without Search, Are You Real?

Written on June 30, 2007  |  by RP Mickler  |  Leave a Comment  | 

I had a client this last week politely suggest that she wasn’t interested in being found on the Internet. I was helping her with branding and positioning strategies – setting up a web presence, identifying keywords, developing backwards links – all so that Google could find her business easier. Alas, “That’s not how I work,” she suggested.

I respect her decision in the context of suggesting technology is an undesirable layer between her and her clients, but it got me to question: is a business – any business – truly real without search? If you cannot be found by the consumer electronically, if your business is invisible in an ocean of competitors, is your business real?

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suggest the typical consumer has come to rely more on Internet search than on Yellow Pages or any other printed listing or directory. Even receiving the Yellow Pages – on my doorstep, at least – becomes a ritual of escorting the book to the trash can in the garage. To me, none of those businesses or listings exist. I don’t use them. What does exist is Google.

And at least when I use Google to find products or services, those who’ve spent time on refining their online presence and have optimized their search profile receive my business. I am easily directed to the most relevant supplier of a need. All of the other 177,000 pages of other suppliers may just as easily not exist. They are, categorically, irrelevant.

In an era of intense competition for dollars and attention, and if the Internet is the exclusive medium and modality for search on anything from cell phones to GPS devices, mapping systems in card, and on desktop computers, and if your small business cannot be found – if you are deemed irrelevant by Google and simply do not exist in the mind of the consumer… how can you execute your business plan?

I think this idea about relevance can even be extrapolated to individuals: if a person cannot be found (via social networks, a MySpace account, a blog, a website, an email address) through search, do they exist? Perhaps that might explain the draw for hundreds of millions to establish their own footprint on the web – to say, in some part, “I am here” and “This is who I am”, reaffirming their own state of being and ensuring to some degree immortality, for our footprints are rarely erased from the Internet. The electronic echoes of “us” on the Internet and on hard drives across the world will far exceed our own lifespan.

To the small business, I think search irrelevance is dangerous. It is a sure-fire way to become ignored and to lose out on new prospects and new opportunity.

To the individual, I think search irrelevance is diminishing in a humanist way – we’re invisible to friends, family, colleagues – are we really here if others cannot find us? And, after you are gone, did you really exist at all? Decartes “thought” and therefore “he was”. Maybe we “search” and therefore “we are”?

R