There's been a lot of speculation recently over what the next stage of online internet development is going to be, and many web 3.0 conferences are being held even now trying to predict what ways the web is going to transition from web 2.0 to web 3.0. Doing some research of my own, I was more than a little bit surprised by the new trends beginning to emerge online in the grand design of web browsers, search engines, and the next generation of intuitive technology.

For a brief overview, web 1.0 was the initial web, where simple websites conveyed static information and sat motionless on html pages. Then came web 2.0. Web 2.0 was predominated by an explosion of interactive content. Social media networks like Facebook, Blogspot, and Hubpages did two things. They made networking with other human beings incredibly easy. And they made content prolific and interactive. Blogs started popping up everywhere for people to read, comment on, and link to.

Web 3.0 is going to take it one step further. The definition of Web 3.0 is still a mystery at this point. Web 3.0 is going to be intuitive, adaptive, learning your likes and dislikes, making the content you search for more relevant to what it perceives you're after. Web 3.0 has been called the semantic web, trying to understand the deeper meaning behind what people really are wanting to find, which we'll talk about in the next section. Websites like Stumbleupon are already tuning their results to their users' preferences, to give them more of what they vote up, and less of what they vote down. But this is small potatoes compared to the technology and software programming of Google's constantly evolving algorithm. Just think about it. Google is the definition of big business. They're a worldwide household brand used by nearly everyone in the civilized world. Their stock price closed at just under $485 today. That's Four Hundred and Eighty Five Dollars!!!! That's a lot of resources at their disposal -- the means to do just about anything they want with the future of the online world.

Here's an example of what the web 3.0 search algorithm might try to do. Let's say I typed in the broad search phrase: "Beautiful Art." Under our current system of web 2.0, Google would return a list of websites and pages based upon a certain set of parameters, like backlinks, domain age, etc. And so, in a sense, what Google will really be giving me is "The Most Popular Art" on the web, not necessarily the most "Beautiful Art." 

Under web 3.0 it will be much different. The web 3.0 algorithm will actually try to interpret and figure out (based upon a huge amount of unseen data) what kind of art it thinks I personally might find beautiful. Let's say it knows I'm a young person living in Seattle and it already has in its database that I've previously made a number of more specific searches about local coffee shops and modern poetry readings. Based on those parameters, it might try and formulate that what I'm really looking for is something like "Beautiful Modern Art."

Or, conversely, it might see that I'm an older person living in the Midwest, who often searches the web for history subjects. For someone like that, Google might consider it more relevant to display choices of art from the classical period. The searches will most likely cater specifically to what it believes each individual wants to see. Which in a way, is both incredible and scary. Web 3.0 search engine algorithms are going to endeavor to know us even better than we know ourselves.

Relevance is a term that has always been a top priority among online marketers -- knowing the factors that tell you which website will rank higher than another for a certain search phrase. In the past, and still today, relevance has been a static thing. It doesn't matter if you're an 19 year old art major in college in Seattle, or a 80 year old history buff. The same list of websites will come up no matter who types in the phrase "Beautiful Art." But in the future, relevance might become relative, might change depending on the user. That's a concept a little scary for those in the cutting edge online marketing world. But it's only logical.

And that's not all. In the past, content has gained rank and relevance by becoming older. Content had to pay its dues, so to speak, before ranking well in the search results. But with the advent of sites like Twitter, live events are gaining a huge amount of relevance in search results. I think back to when Michael Jackson died earlier this year. When the news was first coming out that Michael Jackson may have passed away, Twitter was number 1 on the search results for the name Michael Jackson. Those who do any kind of online marketing know how huge that is, to go from being completely unranked to ranking number 1 in Google for a highly competitive search term, in only a matter of hours because of a huge influx of content all based around a single keyword phrase.

In web 2.0, Google's algorithm gave relevance to content based on its age, the amount of links leading to it, its keyword density, and many other factors. Web 3.0, from what we've seen so far, is going to make a shift. In web 3.0, you'll be able to ask the search engines intuitive questions, like "What should I do tonight, I'm bored?" And based upon factors the search engines have already gathered about your likes and dislikes, your location, and a huge amount of statistical data, it could very well lead you to a short, brand new tweet from someone in England who just said, "I'm bored... I think I'll go have a walk on the beach."

Google's algorithm won't make you read an entire article based upon a phrase like "What to do when you're bored." It'll know statistically that some random guy in England and you seem really similar, and that you just asked a question that he might have perfectly answered in only a single sentence!  Wouldn't that be something crazy, for it to have that much statistical and linguistic data gathered that it could line people up like that?

And it makes sense, doesn't it? It's in Yahoo, Bing, and Google's best interests to make a search engine that's as handy and essential to its user as possible. People don't always want to read a whole article to answer the question, "What should I do tonight?" and "Where should I eat tonight?" But in web 3.0, they'll be able to get the answers to all their questions in as little amount of time as necessary, based perfectly upon individual statistical preference and date. The reason why they'll be able to do this is because the content is now available for them. People really do write online these days about everything under the sun. The challenge for Google and others will be to develop a sophisticated enough algorithm for its users to interact with in ways that are constantly engaging and intriguing them. It'll be very interesting to see what happens, and it may still be quite a long way off. Until then, we'll just have to keep on watching and waiting.