I’ve been following Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang recently and find his blog posts to be insightful and on-point. Recently he asked whether URLs will become less important over time. He wondered this because Google’s Chrome browser highlights relevant search results as well as URLs.
After thinking about this, I’ve noticed that I’ve seen this happening in real time. We use Google Analytics to track traffic to my firm's Website (Envision Solutions). This free service lets us understand what is driving people to the firm’s online content and what publicaions are most popular. I’ve attached two screen shots illustrating data from Google Analytics between July and September 2008 to illustrate what we've observed.
First, (see below), nearly 30% of the firm’s Internet traffic comes from either Google or Yahoo, indicating that when people want to find Envision Solutions, they are just as likely to conduct a search as type the firm’s Web address into a browser. (Much thanks to The Health Care Blog and DiabetesMine for sending people to the site.)
Second, take a look at the top keywords people are using to find the company. You’ll notice that many use the firm's name or mine, as I run the firm. This illustrates that as Owyang notes, if people are curious about a company or product they are often likely to conduct a search to find its Website.
I don’t think URLs are going to disappear – especially for linking content online. But, they are clearly becoming less important for people seeking information.
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