The Search

I'm reading John Battelle's book called "The Search". Just about finished.  Although it's not going to win a Pulitzer Prize, it's a pretty good essay on the search economy and the rise of Google.  It further establishes how we in the newspaper Internet business have pretty much been asleep at the wheel with our platform-shift web businesses.  Time for us all to get out and get moving.

Here are a couple of links.

- Presentation I made at SNA Classifieds.  This is an overview of an Integrated Marketplace Strategy.  It works better with me talking it through but you all should get the idea.  The blueprint slide (second last) is probably the most instructive.  NOTE:  I just realized this is an early rev of the presentation.  Anybody who wants the real deal, email me and I will send it to you.
- www.scroogle.org  After reading Battelle, I'm beginning to lean away from "Google worship".  This engine actually scrapes Google search results but presents them without the ads.  The site is part of GoogleWatch.  www.google-watch.org  They look to be the last bastion of Internet cowboys but it's nice to see a bit of balance come back to our world. 
Another engine recommended:  www.clusty.com  Pretty good organic results.
Maybe we won't all end up working for Google after all.

Comments

[Kathy Schwartz]

Bob,

We're crafting a similar strategy. My concern is we're moving too slow and we'll have to rely on traditional print reps to do the selling. If the value has any potential of "hurting" print, you can guess how successful we'll be in using that resource.

But, it's worth a shot right!

Have you decided on a vendor yet?

see -- I check blogs every now and then.