Zooming Vs. Scroll And Search: How Will It Effect SEO?
Monday, February 11, 2008
A fascinating article in Newsweek.com caught my eye, about how the future of online naviagation might be in zooming, not the scroll and search with which we are so familiar. This all apparently has to do with the way humans process information, being far more skilled at scanning and picking out information spatially than by navigating lists. This has been a situation that has bedeviled web-developers for years -- but now there is finally headway being done in the area of zooming navigation. Of course, we already have some examples of zoom in the form of Google Earth. But, Google Earth has pauses in its zoom to load up new images. The technology we are referring to in this article, however, involves seamless zooming, like increasing the power of a telescope. The Microsoft-owned Seadragon is a bold step in that direction, and with a sharply increased staff as of late, it is clear the software giant has a great belief in its potential to revolutionize both the Internet and they way we navigate our own desktops. So picture, if you will, a search where instead of lists of links you had a visual “map” of choices. You quickly scan with your eyes this map, lock in on the visual you want, and click a button to seamlessly zoom in on it. Repeat, drill-down, zoom in on result after result. I know what you might be thinking – this sort of navigation might work well on a nice big monitor, but what about a cell phone? Well, wouldn’t this method work better than a list of links? I mean, how many Google links can fit on a mobile device’s “screen?” Five? Of course, Microsoft is also working on its own version of zoom for mobile – Deepfish. But, the $250,000 question for us remains – how does zoom navigation impact SEO? Certainly, there will still be tags and keywords. And apparently a zoom search is more efficient than scroll, increasing the amount of information one can work with at one time, according to the Newsweek article, by perhaps even a thousand. However, I would think there would be certain logistics related to search results that would have to be adjusted. And, since zoom navigation might one day take over from scroll, we will have to anticipate these changes and adapt. Labels: blog, Google, Microsoft, seo
posted by Valerie D'Orazio
1 comments
Post a Comment
1 Comments:
That's interesting. But it is very hard to break habits. Try dontclick.it .. the web site that is testing how users respond to life without being able to click a mouse. A huge number of people said they were perfectly happy to go click free. I think they were all liars. Maybe that means i am a natural born clicker ...
Anyway, interesting post. thanks
Julie
Home
 |
