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3rd November 2008

If you're sat on a sofa in the UK, you might have noticed the British government sponsored TV ads encouraging us to think about household carbon dioxide emissions using the phrase 'act on CO2'.

While this is a great series of ads raising awareness of a very simple way to help a global problem, here at Base we couldn't help but notice the way they are encouraging us to find out more online.

Usually TV ads point us at a regular website URL so that we can find out more. Instead the 'Act On CO2' ad, confidently told us to search using the words 'act on co2'. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

And it makes sense. All the good domain names are gone. Getting people to a specific page in a big site is difficult (who's going to write down anything after the first slash?). Why not let the search engines take the strain.

The difference is indicative of the way we're using the web now too. More users already inadvertently put complete domain names like "gmail" and "bbc" into their browser search box out of habit — and it doesn't even register that Google appears and they have to click to get to their destination.

It just goes to show, we want to get there quicker and we want to put in less effort to do it.

The trend looks like it might have started in Japan, where there's been a significant shift in advertising. Printed URL's are a thing of the past, having been replaced by search boxes, with recommended search terms. A big reason search boxes have replaced printed URLs in Japan, is they're a surrogate for Japanese-language URLs, which never did materialize. You can type Japanese text into a search box and get relevant results now that even English-language search pages like Google English are much better at handling Japanese languages.

As it gets harder to get hold of decent domain names and search engines become even more integrated with the web browser, with the likes of Google Chrome et al, the trend can only gather pace.

Related information

• Search Marketing

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