What was Web 1.0 ?

The web's childhood when Google was a baby and Yahoo was the favoured search engine, the most interesting information was on education sites (and hard to access) and everyone was on dial up. The web was about documents and you didn't interact with it, so much as just read it.

What is Web 2.0 ?

Web 2.0 is essentially about bringing interactivity (such as that on a personal computer desktop) to the web. Web 2.0 describes the technological capability of internet browsers to allow people to enter data and view more complex information online.

Example are the ability to enter data into forms or text into blogs, social sites or support desks, by the internal site use of ftp technology in order to to upload media such as text, pictures and video.

It also refers to the streaming of video and audio and the playing of interactive games and the ability to comment on articles. It is related to the technology that enables anyone owning a computer with an internet connection to "almost" automatically use their browser to view or listen to this type of multi media. I say "almost" because there are still "prompts" that must sometimes be followed to download the applications that make this possible.

What Now!

What is Web 3.0 or Semantic Search?

Early search algorithms analysed pages, indexed occurrences of specific words and phrases and attempted to rate the importance of pages for specific search terms using this data and the number of links that referenced the page. The web is now so filled with data that this system is overloaded. Semantic search algorithms are now also checking the context of keywords to return more relevant results.

Search engines are constantly "tweaking" the algorithm to keep their searchers happy with quality results. It is getting harder and harder for websites to keep up with the information they need to optimize their site in order to appear in search engine result pages.

In simpler terms, search engines are now rating groupings of words to analyse the data they will index. This can have unexpected results - some good, some not.

Semantic search is specific. If you enter "boxer dog training" in Google - you will be offered sites that have "targeted" boxer dogs not necessarily all dogs "dog training" sites. The sites that appear are also not always single pages on boxer dogs but can be multiple page sites with related "dog training" words.

Semantically speaking, search is unlikely to display a search result titled "How do I train my dog not to eat my Boxer shorts?" now on this search result page as the other data on the page and site will show that it that it is not actually about Boxer dogs. Good news for searchers, not so good for site builders.

The web is global, so relevant local results are becoming more important to search engines. By using local directories and map applications then sites can "target" terms to appear for a topic - say "plumber" + their location area. Results for searches (if sufficient are available) will show less web sites in the US if you are in Australia. Use this to your advantage by including references to your local area and country.

Unless you start to optimize your site with some specific keywords and phrases and can show your site is relevant to this topic,  the sheer number of competing sites will bury you.

Links from other web sites are also still extremely important.

Other things are also happening. In earlier years a page could stay relevant for a long period of time. The first page of Google is now starting to show blog articles published that day as results. Great! But it may be only 15 minutes of fame on the first page.

Unless the article is referenced by other sites and linked to, it will soon be replaced with the next days new publications.

Keeping up is hard. But not keeping up is quitting!

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This slideshow by Jeremiah Owyang focuses on planning a web media strategy for 2010.

The main four points it makes are to

• Listen to your clients

1. If you are not listening - you don't know what customers want so you won't know where they are looking for it or how to position yourself with web media so they find your business web pages.
2. If you are not listening - a swag of negative comments may be posted on the web without your knowledge
3. If you are not listening - you miss out on the intelligence you need to develop new products for them

• Provide systems to help them

Help desk software is a valuable tool for online complaints that is private to you and the customer but enables you to keep a record of the complaint and resolve it quickly and to the satisfaction of the customer. If customers have no private means of complaints they will take it public!

• Provide discussion areas for them

Forums and blogs and social media pages can all be places where other community members can help your customers by advising people how to use things and giving other valuable information. People can comment and ask questions and generally this helps them to feel connected to your company.

• Employ a person or team of people just for this
  

To keep up with the web based systems, depending on the size of your company and the amount of traffic you get - you are going to need staff!

Start training your people now to handle these systems so you are not caught out later trying to catch up and unable to tell the difference between an expert and amateur. Social marketing training is a big topic, every site is different and has things to learn.

The technology is the easy part, it's there now and can be used as is. Education systems can't keep up! It's the people with the "know how" who are in scarce supply.

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• Web Strategy Survey (slideshare.net)
• Conversation Intelligence: Top Social Media Marketers (ecairn.com)
• The growth of twitter (with analysts) (thecustomercollective.com)