Lloyd Braun, head of the Yahoo Media Group, talked about the importance of user-generated content in relation to Yahoo's media strategy in an article published by the NY Times yesterday. While the major uproar in relation to this had to do with the fact that a year ago, it was the goal for Yahoo to be the generator of such media content, the undertone identifies a critical component in relation to search engine optimization and the major search players, Yahoo and Google. More and more, it is becoming apparent that they would like us to show them, or give them, our content, versus the reliance on their own technology, awesome as it may be, to find everything out there in the "Internet Universe".
Consider Braun's statement: "I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work.". Think about the tools (albeit mostly commercial) that Yahoo has been developing in the past year to help webmasters submit content to Yahoo. We've always had the Yahoo Directory, but we know have Sponsored Search, Search Submit Express, the Yahoo Publisher Network, 360 and their own Ask Experts center.
Google allows webmasters to send content to them through all sorts of new developments. Google Sitemaps continues to be a more mature technology for alerting the search engine to new and updated information on a website. We have seen specific examples of rapid site updates in their search index which I feel is directly correlated to the use of a Google sitemap (in conjunction with other strategies of course). Google Base gives website owners and content owners the ability to send the search engine any information on products, services, announcements, thoughts - anything. Authors have the ability to tag their content with the keywords that they feel are relevant to the descriptions of their offerings. Other tools Google offers that enable users to provide them content (for free mind you) include Blogger and the new Google Page Creator.
Search is becomine a much more sophisticated market to be in and webmasters can not only rely on the search spider to come to their website, pick up content, and place it in their index. New tools and technologies by search giants such as Yahoo and Google provide greater opportunities to get your message out to the public faster and more effectively. Remember when there was a list of about 12 submission forms users could use to submit URL's to search engines?
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