In July 2009 News Limited published an article in their Technology section with this headline. The internet is a vast repository of information where, the article claims, Google has indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25857420-5018992,00.html

Has it indexed yours?

Getting recognised in this wide world of web stuff is no longer as straightforward as it was.  When The Pagesmith developed its first sites, it was acceptable behaviour to “submit” the site URL (address) to the serach engines. In due course, the search engines would respond to this submission and trawl the nominated site.

This spawned a whole lot of submission tools – software that would do this task automatically. The search engines were, initially, disinterested in content as long as there was a “live” website attached to the address. Content later became important and the search engines started to apply “rules” to thwart those who were rorting their goodwill. These massive indexes have got smarter. Tricking them is harder (not that we’ve ever tried) so that you have to have a good marketing strategy to back up what you’re offering on your website.

By comparison Australia has a high rate of internet users. Internet World Stats (www.internetworldstats.com) as at 30 September this year, puts our penetration over percentage of population at 60.4%. Only North America exceeds that figure (74.2%) with Asia at 19.4%  The world population is given as 6.7 billion (Oceania 34.7 million) with 1.6 billion and 20 million internet users respectively.

Twenty million potential customers is what you might aim for. When designing your website and choosing which products and services you want to sell, keep the bigger picture in your mind.

Copyright 2009 © David W James