SMX, Mediagazer & How Search Is Media, Not Tech


I’m really happy that our SMX: Search Marketing Expo search marketing conference is now a sponsor of Mediagazer. That’s not just for the exposure! It’s because Mediagazer itself finally exists as a place where search can escape being seen as “tech” and more as “media,” as it should be.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of Techmeme, Mediagazer’s sister site that compiles tech headlines from across the web. It is my daily online newspaper, which I read each day along with many others (check out this recent New York Times profile of the service). Stories about search and search marketing from our Search Engine Land news site regularly appear over there. Currently, we’re the 18th source on the Techmeme Leaderboard.

But most of search, to me, is a media story. Not a tech story. Technology is involved, sure. But you know, technology is involved in the TV shows you watch and the newspapers you read. That’s media. Search, somehow, gets stuck as tech.

It’s a question that long pestered Google. As the company grew, it would constantly be asked, “Are you a media company?” Heck, it was one of the questions I asked Google cofounder Sergey Brin back in 2004, during a keynote discussion at one of my conferences. “We’re a technology company that applies technology to media,” he replied.

Google’s Eric Schmidt answered similarly in an Los Angeles Times interview in 2006, saying in answer to the same question:

It’s better to think of Google as a technology company. Google is run by three computer scientists, and Google is an innovator in technology in our space. We’re in the advertising business — 99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.

These days, Google does do some of its own content, at least content hosted on sites it owns and operates such as YouTube or Google Knol. But I never defined Google as a media company because it produced its own media. Instead, it was a media company because it made money by getting ads out in front of a wide audience, in front of a broad medium — a medium known as search.

If TV is a medium; if print is a medium; if outdoors is a medium, I wish that more people would finally get that search is a co-equal medium to all of them. It is a broadcast system, but one that works in reverse, where consumers broadcast their desires to marketers and advertisers, as I’ve written:

I’ve described search as a “reverse broadcast system.” In a broadcast system, advertisers spend lots of money to reach a mass audience, hoping to build desire for a product or service. But most of the audience is not interested in their pitches. Search is the reverse. Each search is an expressed desire, something that someone at a particular time actually wants. Advertisers can tune in to the “desire-cast” that’s going on.

That brings me back to Mediagazer. Launched last March, the site collects media headlines from around the web. I remember talking with Mediagazer editor Megan McCarthy after it launched about how pleased I was that many of the tech stories that were also media stories had a new place to be spotlighted, search stories among them.

Search is a media story. If you’re in media, and you’re not doing search or not thinking of search as part of your job, think again. You’re missing out.

To help you, we’ve got a conference heading to New York, our SMX East show that runs from Oct. 4-6. A “boot camp” to get you up to speed. Sessions like:

Plus much, much more. Check out the agenda. We hope to see you there, and we’ll be telling you even more about the show in the coming weeks.