Search Engines Drive Business

by Dr Tony Berg

Google is preparing to move into the retailing sector with a new Internet search engine that could give "bricks and mortar" supermarket groups access to millions of shoppers online. The search engine giant will exploit Google Base (currently only available in the United States) as a potential "virtual supermarket". This will provide supermarket groups that currently have little or no online presence access to new customers. Nikesh Arora, head of Google's European arm, wants to develop Google Base in Europe.

Twenty two percent of the UK population regularly uses the Internet, with 33% of organisations using or intending to use the Internet for buying and/or selling purposes. By 2011, says Google, some 14 per cent of total European retail sales in France, Germany and the UK will take place online, with e-commerce sales in these three countries growing to £177bn from last year's £37bn.

This situation looks set to flourish further as access to the Internet becomes available through digital television and games consoles, on the move through mobile phones, or at local public access points.

Our view at Realnet is that online business will be the main area of growth in the coming years and that traffic will be in large part generated by the three main search engines - Google, Yahoo and MSN. One of our clients has seen year-on-year growth from their website running at 100% and expects that rate to continue again this year.

With the number of business sites growing rapidly a prominent position with a well designed and engineered website is ever more critical to ensure sharing in the exciting world of online business opportunities.

Dr Tony Berg
Managing Director - Realnet Ltd
tonyberg@realnet.co.uk

Article originally published in Cambridge Network Connection magazine Issue 15, 18/04/2006.

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