Search Engines Are Dead

---

Search Engines Are Dead
(They just don't know it yet)

Ok, so this post really isn't about making money online. Or is it? You be the judge. I am going to make a bold claim right here and now. Let it be known that on this day I, the Online Privateer, have stated that Search Engines are dead.

*collective gasp*

Why do I say this? Have you tried searching for something lately with Google, Yahoo, or even that one that used to have a butler give you results...? The results are filled with crap! Spam. Crappy sites that are promoting crappy products filled with crappy blog posts designed simply to sell you crappy stuff. The internet currently is the advertising goldmine. Almost every blog known to man has sold out already, and if they haven't they either don't know how to or are sticking to some outdated moral compass that just points to POVERTY.

It's hard to wade through the crap to find the good stuff. Would you dig through a giant pile of steaming horse manure to see what's underneath? Well you do every day when you type most anything in to Google. Spammers fill the search engines with fake sites, portal sites, throw away link farm sites. These are designed to promote their main sites, which are designed to make money. Everybody is doing it these days. Since the advent of blogger, tumblr, ezinearticles, wordpress, and any one of thousands of other free blogging sites, the shere amount of pure crap has risen exponentially. Google has a real problem on their hands. It used to be that spammers had to shell out some dough to register domain names, get hosted, and have a giant empire of sites. Now it is all free and automated. There really is no such thing as an Honest Internet Business Free actually can be a very bad word. And it is killing search engines.

Thus the reason I make this statement. The giant search engine system is already dead it's just going down kicking and screaming. May it someday actually rest in piece... I mean peace.

So where is the future? Where will people turn to for information?

Social Media. Human powered search engines. Self submit and voting sites that are run by real humans and a real community of supporters. But! But! I am NOT talking about giant social media sites like Digg. It is great, but it is becoming a target for spammers and people to game the system. The real future is in niche social media sites. These niche sites have dedicated followers and community, they have real people looking for real information that has real value. And it is voted or deleted by the majority. This is why Wikipedia, for all it's faults, is so sucessfull. Websites like Sphinn.com for internet marketers are going to be popping up more and more and more for different niches.

A case study for the travel blogging niche

There already is a new travel community site called Globetrott, and other nich communities are are being created every day. Sites like Globetrott are good because they focus on a small niche on the internet. In this case travel blogging, travel destinations and the travelling community. If they can build up a decent audience of travelers, well then they've got a really good thing going for them.

The trick is getting the amount of members they need to keep the site alive. It takes a couple thousand extreme adventurers, perpetual nomads, globe trotters, travel enthusiasts and world wanderers for a site like this to become self sustaining. He's got a tough job ahead of him as the niche is still pretty small. Even though travel is one of the most searched for subjects on the internet. This is where to look to start promoting your websites. Do you have a travel or destination related post on one of your sites? Submit it to Globetrott, look for other social media sites to submit to in different niches.

Real quality places where you can go to discover real quality information. They will be small enough to not be an easy/attractive target for spammers to game the system, and self policed enough by dedicated members to shoot them down when and if they do decide to do it. But don't just submit your site and forget about it, become an active contributing part of the community, network with likeminded people, you may find that you will get more free backlinks than you imagined if you get in with the "community organizers" of a niche.

So, how does all this pertain to earning an online income? Well, how much of your money and traffic do you get from search engines? Could you live without it? Are you active in your niche communities? Have you networked with those people? Perhaps it could be that you would be making more profit online if you started becoming more active in your chosen community niche.

Heck, go crazy and find a niche and create a social media drigg or pligg style website or two for it. Promote it any way you know how. You never know, maybe you could become the next Digg.com for your niche. Welcome to the future of the internet.