Wolfram Alpha and SEO

It’s been an eventful few weeks for search professionals of late.

First we had the launch of another supposed ‘Google-killer’, the Wolfram Alpha search engine. Then came the news that Google was very much alive and was actually releasing new ‘everything-else-killer’ tools to prove it.

With all the hype surrounding the two launches, we thought we’d shed some light on the real issue surrounding these topics – how can organisations exploit them?

Wolfram Alpha

Professor Wolfram is right to position the new search engine not as an alternative to Google, but rather as a separate tool altogether. It’s more of a concise and intelligent Wikipedia, than a Google replacement.

What’s appealing is the concept of having somewhere to quickly reference useful information – a feature which should make it very popular in educational settings.

If there any shortfalls, it’s around ‘popular’ information, such as sporting records, voting results, etc. If they found a way to tap in to the myriad databases across the web and consolidate them all in one place in a normalised way (or using it’s own intelligence, normalise them in real time) it could be as important a move as, say, the move from batch to real time reporting of financial data. Imagine its potential if (or when) it explores teaming up with sports or financial data feeds. There’s obvious benefit in cornering a niche market in search.

A more user friendly and intuitive user interface with friendlier, less intimidating, command buttons and inputs for average web users could also open it up to a wider audience, should this be part of the plan.

Google ‘Show Options’ or ‘Search Options’

The new tools could have a big impact in two key areas.

Firstly, anyone who runs a content led website will need to double their efforts if they want to remain highly ‘visible’ to users who search.

The main thrust of the new toolset is timliness = relevance, so if web owners updated their content on a regular basis to improve their rankings in search previously, they’ll have to now step this up. Their twice weekly updated website won’t now appear to the millions of users now experimenting with limiting search results to just pages published in the last 24 hours or last week.

Secondly, brands now have powerful – and free – brand management tools at their disposal in the shape of forum-only searches.

What impact this will have on the many enterprise PR tools in circulation is now worth watching. Could Google’s new search tools do to online PR software companies what Google Analytics did to the premium analytics market? Are start-ups offering innovative PR and brand management solutions are now facing a pretty bleak future before they’ve even had chance to gain a foothold?

Or could Google’s new tools raise awareness of the market’s more advanced players even futher?

Read more about our search engine optimisation services.

Find out how to exploit the new search tools on New Media Knowledge.

Published: 26 May 2009

Tags: Seo sem & content