2006 Dec 03 - Sun

Book Review: Ambient Findability by Peter Morville

As I've been adding content to my blog, I've also been looking into methods and mechanisms of promoting it .

Over the last few years, I've been receiving JIll Whalen's High Rankings Advisor Newsletter. She devotes her time to educating her readers in the subject of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I've been reading the newsletter ever since the time that meta-tags had significant meaning. Now they represent only a portion of toolset needed to successfully promote a web site.

Web site promotion is really all about 'findability'. Peter Morville presents this topic in a very readable book called 'Ambient Findability' available from O'Reilly Press. The sub-title of his book is 'What We Find Changes Who We Become', which I think is very apt, based upon the research he presents within the pages of his book. We as Blog authors and web page developers provide content so that we can share it with others, and perhaps make some money from it, if not for other altruistic reasons. As they say, content is king. But if no one knows about the content, what good does it do? So the key question is: how does one get others to visit? Obviously, other's can't visit if they don't know where to visit. One concept that comes immediately to mind is a one called viral marketing. Marketing Terms defines it as a 'marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message'. If you can get a snowball of a message rolling, people will come.

On the other hand, in order to build a base of respectability and long term associations, any number of ideas and philosophies need to be considered. No one promotion gimmick will yield results. Around 175 pages of book can be boiled down to this meaning laden quote:

Semantic Web tools and standards create a powerful, enduring foundation. Taxonomies and ontologies provide a solid semantic network that connects interface to infrastructure. And the fast-moving, fashionable folksomonies sit on top: flexible, adaptable, and responsive to user feedback.

The book is much more readable than what is found in that exerpt, but hopefully the exerpt provides a desire to find out more of what it takes to build a successful web site. Search Engine Optimization is part and parcel of semantic content. Tag building through such sites as Flickr and Del.icio.us provide the folksomony, or user ratedness of a site. And search engine classification schemes provide accessibility.

Many different topics related to finding things are presented within the book. It is an excellent first book for those involved with the multi-role task of making web sites findable, as well as usable.

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