Deep Web: The Next Frontier
The web that you search is not complete. Far from complete, in fact. When you use any search engine (ex. Google, MSN, Yahoo) to search for results on the web, you’re relying on the the completeness of results found in the search engine’s index or cache. In other words, all search engines, even Google, can only provide results based on what it has found itself. The term Deep Web refers to all web sites, content pages, and files that are inaccesible to search engines, and therefore can not be included in any result pages displayed for any query.
Some of the content that is contained in the Deep Web is found on pages that do not have any inbound links, dynamic content that can not be accessed, or content secured behind password-protected websites. More interesting is the Deep Web found inside video and image content. Since search engines can’t actually look at a picture or watch an online video, this content is widely ignored. Combine this fact with the rise of online video for both business and personal use, and you can begin to see the ramifications. As more and more written blogs give way to video blogs and podcasts, this once searchable content will become part of the Deep Web - inaccessible to search engines or users’ searches.
Companies exist that create tags for videos. In other words, they watch the video, and create text that describes the content of the video, which are called tags. But rather than create tags that describe the video as a whole, Deep Tagging is the process of creating tags for parts of the video. Search engines read these tags and then can match online videos to search engine queries. However, this process is very human-intensive manual, and Deep Tagging companies have struggled to stay in business.
Online video is clearly becoming the next wave for online communication. It’s become easier and easier to make, manage, produce, and maintain video for both business and residential users. Companies that can tap into deep web content such as video will surely be ones to watch in 2008 and beyond.
