Today there are four ways people find content on the Web:
Typing a URL directly: This is a direct line of thinking, and a conscious direction to
arrive at a particular destination. Sally types URL, Sally gets website.
Clicking a referring link on another site: By clicking inline and contextual links
(including advertisements), the user is following a linear path of interest??”they are
tunneling down a rabbit hole influenced by the link choices of the referring
authors.
Selecting the site from a search engine results page: This is the unbiased, broad
query??”the big ???what??™s out there???? question. Results are ranked by relevancy using
complex algorithms.
Using social networking and social media sites: As socialization becomes more
influential in how people use the Web, content is increasingly graded by crowd
wisdom. This is especially true in social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and
Ma.gnolia.com, where anyone can see what the user base is linking to.
None of these are particularly better than the others. From a marketing perspective, all
need to be tackled with varying amounts of time and money. While a company has explicit
control over every word and pixel on its own domain, the other three can only be
influenced.
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