Sahar sent this article from Search Engine Land tonight.
Reading this piece I was struck by its tenor and how polarly opposite domain folks and SEO guys/gals seem to think. Domainers think: "How can I exist without Google .. if Google blew away tomorrow, how could I guarantee traffic delivery?" .. SEO folks seem to think, "How can I get free visits from the top search engine and if that top search engine ever changes, how can I get free traffic from the next top search engine."
Could domainers use their great domain names to "game" Google's algo and display their URL's and sub-domains more prominently?.. Yes. Is that why most domainers buy or bought domains? No. It's about 'going around' the search engine, not through.
I feel for Google because it's tough at the top. They sit on all this traffic. Everybody wants it because traffic is like money. If they give it out 'here', it has ramifications for their algo .. if they give it out 'there' it has different ramifications for their algo. Their success in delivering relevant results drives even more traffic (revenue) to their front door.. like a crazy house party that everyone wants to attend.
Google has to keep targeting, hunting, finding the most useful results and stay ahead of the increasing flood of black, gray and white-hats to keep this magic parade going. Yes, they get a redo if they make a boo-boo or two, but if they consistently mess up, or if the gray-hats manage to buy (arbitrage) or game (SEO) their way to the top in a big enough way as to render their results less-useful, GOOG opens the search-pie up to competition, because the results are less pure. The house party thins out as folks look for the next big thing.
So I see Google as a traffic bank.. a central reserve of traffic, that has to keep giving most of it away or holding it back from monetization in order to grow the overall pie and bring more and more visits to the front door. A web traffic de Beers.
Domainers are the polar opposite of this dynamic.. They want their organic front door traffic and that traffic is free with each name's registration. Domainers can show what they like at each domain. The traffic comes organically. It comes irrespective of implementation and can be leveraged via arbitrage without consequence (in the sense that domainers can buy traffic at Google or Yahoo or MSN to enhance their organic traffic volume). Google doesn't want to index them? That sucks, but organic type-in traffic still comes around the search engine through the address bar and other navigation.
The coup d'etat of search and navigation may occur the day that Felix can explain his intentions to Oscar and vice-versa .. a world where this odd couple can find common ground to leverage each others strengths in a way that creates a much bigger pie of their own. The value of the prize is at least partly reflected in the market capitalization set using Google's closing price today.
Then again, maybe such a meeting of the minds won't happen. Perhaps domain registrants continue to do their own thing, probing, experimenting, building and trying to get bigger until the day that they find that way through and release the hammer. Man, you gotta love disruptive technologies :)