Conform to Google or Die

Jupiter Research's David Card makes an excellent point about the importance of web sites making their pages discoverable by Google. He quotes colleague Barry Parr as saying "Publishers must make their sites the archive and Google their search page."

And Google Base may be the engine that streamlines the process. Sure keywords are nice, but with a modicum of know how they can be manipulated. Google Base throws open the doors for individuals to create their own schema for identifying their pages, and based on what Google has told me, what the company learns from the experiment could reshape the way their search algorithm works in indexing pages.

So content folks -- be they bloggers, affiliate marketers, news organizations or advertisers should provide input to Google Base now or face being destined to become search result number 4, 912.

Card also predicts that TiVo will be bought by someone this year, and he suggests Nielsen/Netratings, which makes sense as an audience measurement tool, but the company isn't in the device business. Perhaps Steve Jobs' increasing interest in media (see iTunes, Pixar sale) will push Apple or Disney to acquire TiVo before it becomes yet another good idea that makes much more money for the clones than (one of) the originators. Or, maybe it will be Scientific-Atlantic or Comcast that scoops them up.