Two Threats to Web Publishers

Webmasters and web publishers should be planning now for two of the greatest threats of GNS to searching engine ranking.

 

The first threat has to do with auto-stemming.  Several years ago, Google automatically began returning search results for the singular and plural forms of search terms.   Auto-stemming also applied to grammatical variants of words as well. The problem begins here: the difference between normal Google search and Google Number Search is that the latter does not apply auto-stemming.   Whereas a normal Google search of 'search engine' will return results on 'search engine' and 'search engines,' the GNS for '732724 364463' returns the results that mostly match the numeric term - ‘search engine’ - but does not autostem and search for 'search engines.' 

 

This may be a terrible thing as it was in late 2003 when optimized webpages dropped in search engine ranking and, as a result, webmasters needed to readjust their SEO strategy.   Now, webmasters need to make sure that non-auto-stemming doesn't pose a problem to the optimization they did in late 2003.

 

The second threat to web publishers from GNS is the problem of unresolved word-numbers. (A word-number is the set of numbers that correspond to the spelling of a word, company name, etc... on a phone keypad. i.e. the word-number for ESPN is 3776.)   Newer tech companies, like Cingular and T-Mobile, will be suddenly forced to deal with the fact that Google Number Search will not bring consumers to their sites any longer.  This is because newer tech companies’ names in word-numbers cannot be resolved by GNS. 

 

One solution to this threat (and more money as a result into Google's wallet) is to advertise with Google Adwords.   For instance, if your company name’s word-number isn’t resolvable with GNS, you can still advertise with AdWords to insure visibility.  For instance, the word-number for TextPayMe (839872963) doesn’t work with GNS, but smaller word-numbers do work. That is, TextPayMe can tailor its marketing strategy to win over with common keywords, such as Pay Sms. If you try the word-numbers for PAY SMS, or allnum:729 767, you’ll find a listing in the Sponsored Links a company that proves this method works: m-enable.com (wireless payment solutions).  It may be too difficult for TextPayMe to compete with the Google search results for the ALLNUM of 729 767; examples: SMP for Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP=767) or Pop (POP=767) or Ray (RAY=729) or Raw (RAW=729). However, these are words that aren't hot keywords, and so it is unlikely any organization will bid on keywords (for AdWords) like Ray or Pop or SMP. TextPayMe, therefore, can get the visibility they need by purchasing AdWords for relevant keywords, such as PAY and SMS.    

 

The AdWords solution is a quick fix until Google learns how to include names of newer tech companies in Google Number Search, if it ever does.  There is the possibility that Google never will not budge.  The search engine giant could stand to make additional revenues by ‘refusing’ to make any alterations to GNS, citing any excuse they want as part of a strategy to increase revenues.  That’s not likely though.  But IF the status quo remains, we’re talking billions of dollars of advertising in AdWords - companies that never needed to advertise because their SEO strategies have always worked for them will need to start advertising on Google. The problem with this solution is that common web-speak keywords will be overbid on and over-saturated.

So, the AdWord solution is not the best solution for the long run.  Perhaps the solution is this: If GNS cannot resolve the word-number of a new company, and instead returns a hodgepodge of numbers as a result, then perhaps the solution lies in numbered domains.  Let’s take WORDDIAL for example.  The word number for WORDDIAL, 96733425, doesn’t resolve in GNS.

 

 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=num%3A96733425

 

However, WordDial owns the domain name, 96733425.com, which is the first result for the ALLNUM of 96733425.  This way WordDial can still direct business to their company despite GNS’s imperfections.  Alternatively, a company can put their word-number in their meta tags and such and see if that works. There is a problem, however, with changing metatags and buying numbered domains. These strategies would work only if GNS cannot resolve a number - when that happens, Google treats the query as normal google search and returns results that contain the exact number you queried as seen in the example above with WordDial. The reason why this happens is that GNS cannot find a quantity of relevant results that meets a certain threshold that is set by Google. This will likely happen if your company's wordnumber is more than six letters long, like WordDial. If it six letters long or less, buying a numbered domain will do little good. The reason is that GNS would not default to numbered results and instead provide valued results.

Read the second part of this post at Google isn't that dumb

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