In the two decades since the dot-com bubble burst, technology has changed our society in ways few could have imagined. Many more people are online today than there were even back then — over 90% of Americans — and recent advancements have completely changed the way most people interact with technology.
Today, 51 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search. 10 percent comes from paid search, 5 percent for social, and 34 percent from all other sources combined. Organic traffic comes from people using search engines such as Google to look for specific keywords, which the engine then matches to relevant content. Organic traffic is also a good metric to use if you’re looking for whether something is popular with the public or not.
Here are a few ways modern technology has changed the landscape when it comes to web searches.
Media and Media Consumption
Modern advancements in bandwidth and streaming have completely revolutionized the way people engage with media. Cast routing technology routes all your visitor’s connections through a firewall and CDN to ensure they are as short as possible. The result is faster website loading times, which help keep customers on websites longer. This has been vital for sites like Facebook which handle billions of accounts simultaneously.
Climate Change and Green Tech
The climate crisis has seen an increase in searches for information, as well as for greener, energy-saving tips, and hacks. Whole communities have been formed around zero or low-waste living and conscious consumption as a way of living that’s lighter on the planet. This has influenced the tech sector as well, with many companies moving to greener shipping practices, installing solar panels, and developing more energy-efficient technologies.
Biotech and Healthcare
In addition to more climate-conscious technology and searches, there’s been a jump in the biotech and healthcare industries as well. While many are focusing on disease recovery and research, there has also been a jump in telehealth in recent years. While it really came into fashion with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth research was on the rise well before then. New technologies such as virtual visits and chatbots are now being used extensively to provide patients with their healthcare needs.
Finance
Blockchain is the open-source code that powers Bitcoin and over 6,000 other cryptocurrencies. While it’s the most obvious factor to point to, the changes to the financial sector are more than just cryptocurrency. Many Americans are now banking and managing their finances completely online, a change that would have been unheard of at the inception of the internet. Articles about money management are common on big-name lifestyle and news blogs as well.
Technology has continued marching forward at a pace few could have imagined when the internet first began. Both past and recent advancements have completely revolutionized the way the average person interacts with the world around them, and these changes will likely keep coming in the future.
Changes to the tech landscape inevitably affect the social landscape as well, which is a large part of what shapes search results and searching behavior. Overall, the broad reach of the internet has given rise to an unprecedented amount of information being widely available, in the hands and pockets of the majority of Americans. While some corners of the internet spread misinformation, most are at least basically reliable and many companies have taken on the challenge of fighting misinformation through the same sort of technology used to create and spread it.
In the end, the internet and any related technologies are very powerful tools that can be amazingly effective when used in service of good causes.
