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> Once upon a time, people bookmarked sites with high-quality content, and would go directly there. Anecdotally, as a late-millennial close to the Gen Z cutoff

> Once upon a time, people bookmarked sites with high-quality content, and would go directly there. Anecdotally, as a late-millennial close to the Gen Z cutoff, I cannot tell you the last time I or my peers have bookmarked a site. Older relatives have said their children in highschool who are part of an otherwise probably(?) the most technically proficient generation don't even know what bookmarking is (another fun experiment: ask anyone in Gen Z what the www. before a website domain stands for, you'll be surprised by some answers). I personally can't see myself or others who previously didn't habitually bookmark starting to bookmark sites en masse just because Google has to change their algorithms; that's like saying people will go back to MySpace because Facebook has so many privacy scandals around it.

Terretta 8y ago
I agree with you. I wrote about this 9 years ago (2010) when ReadWriteWeb noticed people were getting to Facebook by typing Facebook into Google. So many, that when ReadWriteWeb outranked Facebook for the term ‘facebook’, masses ended up on their article, and started complaining in the comments it wasn’t Facebook: A decade ago, I switched to Google because it offered me a search box that led to nothing but results. That's all I wanted, and all it did. This match made in heaven catapulted Google ahead of Excite, Lycos, Altavista, and Inktomi. While the search box has stayed the same, Google's users have not. Today's Googlers don't know the difference between a URL and a search term, or even between a browser and the Internet. By focusing on features such as real time web search or categorized results for tech-savvy users, Google is stranding its mass audience – a mistake its advertising business model absolutely cannot afford. Google needs to cater to the folks who ended up on ReadWriteWeb through their typical use path, making Google work for them and get them where they're trying to go, instead of trying to retrain them to adapt to Google. Google needs to refine the "I feel lucky" button until it's good enough to be the default, helping the Internet's least savvy users find where they want to be even if they're doing it wrong. AOL was doing this before the turn of the millennium, so it’s not just you and your “late-millennials” friends, it’s also your grandparents. Before the bookmark, you could type a single keyword in, and go directly there. BnL, these amount to the single word of a domain name. Last few years, browsers are gradually bringing back the keyword, even toying with URL bar to drop “www”, “.com”, and the path. So I agree with you, it’s not really about bookmarks. Surely we can imagine another way of going directly to a trusted brand than the extra clicks needed at a “search engine” or “portal”. For instance, Page Rank itself used to just be a meta view of which sites were most linked to as a proxy for most authoritative, meaning, the audience that followed references or links would organically find the most cited or linked sources, and then know to get back there by name or by bookmark. The point is, high quality “destination” brands can benefit from fans reaching them directly, without having to play the SEO and SERPs traffic funnel game.

Terretta 8y ago

I agree with you. I wrote about this 9 years ago (2010) when ReadWriteWeb noticed people were getting to Facebook by typing Facebook into Google. So many, that when ReadWriteWeb outranked Facebook for the term ‘facebook’, masses ended up on their article, and started complaining in the comments it wasn’t Facebook: A decade ago, I switched to Google because it offered me a search box that led to nothing but results. That's all I wanted, and all it did. This match made in heaven catapulted Google ahead of Excite, Lycos, Altavista, and Inktomi. While the search box has stayed the same, Google's users have not. Today's Googlers don't know the difference between a URL and a search term, or even between a browser and the Internet. By focusing on features such as real time web search or categorized results for tech-savvy users, Google is stranding its mass audience – a mistake its advertising business model absolutely cannot afford. Google needs to cater to the folks who ended up on ReadWriteWeb through their typical use path, making Google work for them and get them where they're trying to go, instead of trying to retrain them to adapt to Google. Google needs to refine the "I feel lucky" button until it's good enough to be the default, helping the Internet's least savvy users find where they want to be even if they're doing it wrong. AOL was doing this before the turn of the millennium, so it’s not just you and your “late-millennials” friends, it’s also your grandparents. Before the bookmark, you could type a single keyword in, and go directly there. BnL, these amount to the single word of a domain name. Last few years, browsers are gradually bringing back the keyword, even toying with URL bar to drop “www”, “.com”, and the path. So I agree with you, it’s not really about bookmarks. Surely we can imagine another way of going directly to a trusted brand than the extra clicks needed at a “search engine” or “portal”. For instance, Page Rank itself used to just be a meta view of which sites were most linked to as a proxy for most authoritative, meaning, the audience that followed references or links would organically find the most cited or linked sources, and then know to get back there by name or by bookmark. The point is, high quality “destination” brands can benefit from fans reaching them directly, without having to play the SEO and SERPs traffic funnel game.