Video killed the text search star? Nope, the text search star adapted!!

I have the utmost respect for Lenn Harley. I am convinced that she never ever leaves her computer. The degree to which she manufacturers post on ActiveRain borders on staggering. In fact, I have dreamed that she has a little factory of umpa-lumpas typing away and making maps all day long. And it's not just the shear volume......it's the quality of the posts. When I hear the call that ActiveRain should be featuring more 'hard core' real estate content, I usually think to myself, "well get ready for a BIG dose of Lenn Harley"

Over the weekend, she dipped her toe into a little fray that I had the good fortune of missing. (I was on a golf weekend with the boys). If you missed it, you can find it here, here, and here. We always talk about these sort of things after they play out, especially when one of ours is taken to task. (you'll have to read if you want the details). We decided that when it was all said and done, there were a lot of statements that were right, many that were wrong and a few that were just personal strategy decisions that don't really have a right or wrong answer.

One thing that I wanted to touch on, because it is near and dear to my heart is a contention that Lenn made about video. Here is what Lenn wrote:

Gadgets and Video. Another detrimental trend is the continued focus on non-Google friendly gadgets and platforms. If anything is going to diminish our Google juice, it will be the introduction of Google alien gadgets including video. Video is fun. Video is cute. Video is NOT Google friendly. The more bandwidth devoted to video and other Google alien gadgets, the less Google synergy ActiveRain will enjoy. Just because we can is no reason to do things.

I want everyone to understand something.......nobody KNOWS exactly what Google is going to do. Tomorrow, Google could say, "The world is flat, and if you have anything on your website that insinuates anything other than the world is flat, we are blacklisting you." Are they going to do that? Of course not.....but they could. People's best guesses (don't get me wrong, they are certainly educated guesses) are based on what they have seen in the past. People also make guesses based on patents that google file. But Google files a lot of patents!! And sometimes, (gasp!) they don't even file a patent, because someone else already filed it years ago and they just swoop in and buy them! (there is a rumor floating around they are flush with cash.......can anyone confirm this?)

The last thing I am is an internet history buff, but I'll bet there was a time when Google didn't index those bandwidth hogging images (pictures). Somewhere along the line, some really smart guy or gal at Google said "Hey, let's figure out a way to index images"..........and it was done. Which leads me to video............

Video is fun. Video is cute. Video is NOT Google friendly........YET!! (which isn't even totally true) There is a great article on SearchEngineLand that details the Google Universal and Google Video search products. You should go read it right now. The day is quickly approaching when Google WILL index video and integrate those results in the normal Google searches your clients use to find you. They will index it thoroughly. If they don't........someone else will, and that someone else will quickly become a leader in the Internet Search field. My guess is that if those rumors of Google being flush with cash are true, there is no way on this flat earth they will let someone else beat them to the punch.

So you can either choose to ignore video and focus on text, which will certainly bring you results (as it has for SOOOOO many to date) or you can decide that you are going to figure out how to incorporate video into your marketing plan now. If you choose the latter, you'll be in a pretty sweet position when Google decides that a video is worth at least 1000 words (and it will happen).

(I couldn't resist putting this video in......in has ZERO bearing on this conversation......but it might just be the cutest thing my kid has done so far.......and I missed it because I was down in Atlanta at the RETechSouth Conference...........and yes, that's him at center court!)