Why MySpace And Wikipedia Pages Are More Important Than Ever
MySpace is over. Traffic is falling. Google's new enhanced music search has pushed my Wikipedia entry further down the page. Why should I care what a bunch og geeks write about me anyway, right? Wrong. First, both MySpace and Wikepdia still get massive amounts of traffic; and to the degree that you can control anything on the net; both offer opportunities for you to shape your own message.
Now, add all the new traffic that Google music search is bringing to these sites. MySpace and it's new acquisition iLike are, along with Lala, the primary providers of music for Google's enhanced search engine. That means that a lot more people will be visiting your related MySpace pages. Lala (which in my tests this morning delivered the music for most of my Google searches) draws all of its bios directly from Wikpedia.
Are your searches not delivering enhanced results yet? Be patient, their working their way through a very long list of artists. But get your MySpace/iLike and Wikipedi/Lala presence updated now and wait for a jump in traffic.
PS: Don't forget that Rhapsody, Pandora and imeem are also linked directly from Google's new music search results.
It’s a bad thing. Search “nine inch nails” for example. I’m sure Trent Reznor would rather have the traffic go to his nin.com website rather than an ilike page.
Those music links at the top of Google now clutter the true first result and will leech traffic away from artists websites.
I hate to say it but it’s almost like fixed results. I don’t like it.
I agree, artists want their fans to go their web site, not ilike!!
Search is about helping the user find what they want, not necessarily what others (like the artist) want them to find.
This is why it is even more important to have an up to date website that is prominently linked on iLike and Myspace. When potential fans search and get your iLike profile, you want them to be able to locate you “home” on the web with ease.
Ive got a good question: what will happen to FB Fan Pages and how will they factor in all of this now that Myspace is making a true play for the music space on the web?
Sam
I agree with you, but I don’t think that is what Google is doing here.
Normally, Google attempts to rank the most relevant (requested) page first — exactly what you’re talking about. In this case, Google is automatically making the first listing a link to a affiliated business, who will give them a commission on sales — this is generally known as an advertisement.
At which point did users request links to Lala? Seriously.
“But get your MySpace/iLike and Wikipedi/Lala presence updated now and wait for a jump in traffic.”
That is, assuming people ARE searching for you…
They didn’t request links to Lala. They did, however, request links to sites that would allow them to listen to songs in their entirety for free. Which lala does, one time, before reverting to 30-second samples.
^great point Andrew
Indeed, google is getting more and more useless when you’re looking for a new album by an artist you know. The search string “artist name” will only deliver results on the 1st page that are the most popular. A brand new album is usually not the most popular by any artist, unless the buzz has started already or somebody has tricked or bribed the bot of the search engine.
Music forums where new album news spread through word of mouth, are more helpful in that, but the viral marketing trend of paid bloggers promoting offtopic product has spoiled the experience quite a bit as of late.
About two years ago, I have found that new releases that I would buy right away can go under the radar for about half a year before I first notice that they have come out. The death of the music press and its seemingly total ignorance for CDs that are only available through artists websites has been a major contributing factor to that.
Or maybe, I don’t know the right blogs just yet.
Wikipedia is good, but when it comes to music albums that are non-mainstream releases and the listing of complete album credits, their demand to be an encyclopedia does not gel with my interests.
Goes to show that reading CD booklets still has not found a replacement in the online world, because the album credits on mp3-only albums are virtually nonexistent. The latter is a real shame and the reason that today’s “Wrecking Crew” might go unnoticed, even for years to come.