Can you even imagine a world without search? Imagine having to find information on the internet without using the help of Google, Yahoo or Bing. That would be a very difficult task indeed. How would you have found information? Would online advertisement have been as relevant to web users as it is today? Would websites have looked differently?

Let’s face it – search engines have become a fundamental part of life in the 21st century. It enables internet users to find information quickly just by typing a few relevant keywords/search phrases. In fact I think if search engines didn’t exist, the internet and the way information is found would have looked totally different today.

Web portals would have played a more significant role. It would have been the best source to find information about various topics. Using this way to obtain information or addresses to other web pages would have been very time consuming and frustrating to say the least. There would have been a lot more printed information than there are today and conventional libraries would have been used more to find information.

Online advertising would have been limited to advertising on portals or content websites and because it would have been categorized advertisement and not keyword specific advertisement it would not have been as relevant to users as it is on search engines today. This leads me to believe that it would have been a more difficult task to convert a visitor to your website in to a lead as your bounce rate would have been much higher as a result of less targeted traffic.

Search Engine Optimization would not have existed as the optimization of web pages wouldn’t have made a difference in how people find a website. Thus the general structure of a website might also have looked different than the current one. Web designers would also have had more freedom in designing graphic rich websites as the limitations set by robots would not have limited them.

I think it’s safe to say that life without search is virtually impossible to imagine and I think search will continue to evolve alongside the internet becoming more advanced as time ticks by.