Oh Google how you’ve changed. As with every change, you seem to become less fun.

Those who were there using the web when Google launched, will probably remember how much fun it was to discover things with Google. The single, biggest amazement by my recollection? That I could enter any specific text string, and Google would return the exact URLs where it appeared. Wow. Indexing what seemed like the entire World Wide Web. Amazing! Check this out… (search)… and this! (search) and on and on. I had no idea those things were out there, and they were wicked cool, and I was thrilled to have discovered them. I made my day… sunnier.

When I needed to “find” something I didn’t know existed, I used my creativity - I crafted a query I suspected might return something close to what I suspected was out there… and it worked!

Google was awesome.

These days, after many years of Google becoming more and more like my ornery, overly disciplined and strict grandfather, the experience searching with Google is almost the opposite of what it was. Every query is now a battle, and nearly every result set is a disappointment. That might not be fair to say, because not every result set is inadequate. But, using Google is certainly not fun, and therein lies some disappointment. Google is no longer a discovery tool. It is much closer to a directory than ever before, and a biased, incomplete directory at that. As Gigaom said in it’s article about Pinterest and Pinterest look-a-likes, search is a task, and discovery is fun.

Search is changing, and Google is a big reason. I don’t think Pinterest is any more amazing than Google image search or Bing image search can be. Unfortunately, Google and Bing don’t do image search very well. The reason seems to be one of control — these “search engines” seem to want to control us in ways that make them money, instead of allowing us to engage with their tools in ways that make us happy.

That “seem” is a reflection of the emotion one feels when using Google or Bing image search, vs. visual discovery tools like Pinterest.  And that’s the “fail” — that is where Google and other search engines miss the market. Pinterest is so simple, and not much of an innovation. It’s done what Facebook and Google and Bing could have easily done, had they the freedom to deliver what is easy, cool, fun, interesting, etc. But those organizations instead project a sense of technical seriousness instead. They are in a battle, and we users can sense it. Overly gruff, overly concerned with things “we don’t understand”, and so overly-focused on some endpoint beyond our immediate desires that it gets in the way.

Looking for an image to inspire your blog post? What were the odds that you would hit Google image search for inspiration a year ago? Have you tried Pinterest? If you have, what are the odds today, that you’ll engage with Pinterest first, before going to Google or Bing image search? Seems like nothing but upside for Pinterest.

Sadly, engineers don’t recognize today’s “search” challenge as anything beyond social graphs, vote flags, or  races to comprehensiveness or correctness or any combination of weighting factors probabilistically certain to define “the best”. And that’s probably the biggest “fail” of all. Just as Apple knew mediocre design would fail to sell an excellent product into a crowded marketplace, Google’s technocrats fail to recognize that its customers are sloppy, messy, emotional, tired, and often anxious humans. Of course a handful of every hundred American consumers work hard and care about correctness and utility and “the right way” to do things. Everybody else? Well, let’s just say technically-correct and “safe”, boring, search isn’t very satisfying.

Search is a task, previously reserved for librarians and statisticians. Increasingly, it is returning to that status, encouraged by Google and the others. Discovery? It’s still a wide open field.

I’m getting tired of so-called experts trashing ICANN’s decision to open up the Internet naming system on the right side of the dot, to enable names with dot anything. It was a smart thing to do, although it may have been executed poorly. It for sure has been interpreted poorly by the same people it was meant to inspire.

The Internet name system has not evolved much, despite tremendous growth of our Internet use and related Internet technologies. We still type in dot com (or whatever) and we still publsih html pages on URLs. The system of search and storage and registration of published information still relies on static URLs to represent information, and more than ever we struggle with naming. There are fewer names available yet we still must draw from our one, virtually static lexicon. Clearly the naming system needs to evolve. But how? Any ideas?

Unfortunately not. The very naming pros and creative experts that developed the web have failed miserably to recognize this opportunity for progress.  The same people whose “out of the box” thinking created what we have today, have failed to think outside of the box that is the domain name system.

Dot anything  was (is?) your chance to change the way things are done on the Internet.

Sadly, everyone just thinks it’s another way to add more tlds to be used the same old way. Can you fault the ICANN governing body for at least acknowledging they don’t have any great ideas, and enablign us to take charge and implement some of our crazy ideas?  Apparently people can and do fault ICANN for that. And it’s sad to watch.

The same idea-less domain speculators that failed to monetize valuable domain names outside of a resale market criticize the effort.  The same so-called “naming consultants” who charge consulting fees to help pick Internet names criticize the effort. The same “big brands” that fail to innovate and instead use protective tariffs and laws to guard their markets, criticize the efforts.I’m even seeing these same “losers” criticize the cost as high — starting at $185k. Sigh. Since when was $185,000 a high cost for innovation at the root domain level, in any business or industry?

So if there are so many loud and often ignorant critics, where are the disruptors who can prove me right? I suspect their quietly working hard on their ideas.

Dot anything is an opportunity to do things differently. To try something new. If you can’t imagine how that might work, get out of the way and let those who can, try.

Google’s Panda update has old school and new school SEOs running for the hills. They don’t know what to do to recover from Panda. The old tricks don’t work, and often appear to be the cause of the Panda penalty. Google doesn’t care - it’s busy making money as the only search engine serving the American marketplace.

I guess we’ll never know the SEO secrets to Google Panda recovery.

Did you feel that let down? That big drop in brain chemicals after you read “I’ll guess we’ll never know…” ? That’s what you do to your readers when you write crap like this. And when you call yourself an SEO, writing crap like this, you may just tarnish your brand permanently in the minds of those who actually care about SEO as a profession.

I’m seeing SEO journalists and self-proclaimed SEO experts do this… to get traffic. Of course it works in Google… Google can’t tell real content from crap content any more. But it doesn’t care. I do. And your readers do.

Now if everybody does it, will that make it okay?

I see where you’re going. If you cabal members all do it, then it will seem normal. Social norming… that’s the technique. And then we can huddle around our Seattle propaganda hub and pretend it’s all true.. congratulate each other for fighting the hard fight, and winning as “SEOs” (or inbound marketers or whatever).

Nope, sorry guys.  Dreaming doesn’t make it so. And colluding behind the scenes doesn’t make you any better as an SEO either. You probably don’t know it, but your prospects already talk about you. They listen, and then they go away (from you) and talk (to others) about how you seem enthusiastic, willing to negotiate, willing to seemingly offer guarantees and reduced rates, and earnest to work hard to achieve results. But those prospective clients also say — you don’t come across as likely to get it done.

And nobody wants to pay for services for the sake of keeping you and your team of underlings employed.

So go ahead and keep writing. Go for broke… why not “Matt Cutts and the Secrets of the Google  Algorithm” followed by “I guess Matt will take those secrets of the Google algorithm with him to his grave…“. But know this : you look like a fool. To everyone.