PageRank, while controversial, is but the tip of a much greater iceberg, questioning the very nature of search as we know it today.

How did I get to this point? I read a post over at JohnCow.com, conducting an interview with Courtney Tuttle. Off I headed to Courtney’s website, and came across a post entitled RealRank won’t change anything. I couldn’t agree more (for many reasons), and yet I have still been supportive previously of the move. Why?

I actually wrote a comment on Courtney’s blog, that actually took me through some mental gymanstics while writing it. I think it should serve well as an explanation:

You know, the more I think about this whole issue, the more I realise just how much it covers, and how tricky it is to come to a conclusion.

In the short term, people need Google a lot more than they’d like. This isn’t at all healthy for the internet as a whole - because whatever the core issues are (paid linking, rankings etc), the fact remains that you’re having to conform to one point of view, one way of doing things.

And for that reason, things won’t remain that way, and whilst I can’t begin to imagine when a significant change will come about, it’s going to happen. The rise of both the popularity and the the importance of social media is an early indication of this.

In fact, I read a thread over at webmaster world dated 2002 - and they were saying a lot of the same things people say now about the future of the internet. Namely that the general information repositries like Google are not the future. I think that still holds true.

How does this all relate back to RealRank? Well, for things to move on, people eventually have to stop relying on Google so heavily - even if it hurts them sometimes in the short term. How can you progress if you hold on to the old way of doing things?

I fully agree that RealRank itself is a pointless substitute, the good thing to come of this is that people are starting to QUESTION the need for Google. And questioning and debate is needed before things can move on.

So, whilst I couldn’t care less about RR itself, it opens up some much more interesting questions, which have been largely swept under the carpet up to now, because everyone was too busy trying to please / game Google.

I think it could become a fascinating (and much needed) debate, if bloggers choose to stop focusing on PageRank, and look at the bigger picture. The future of search, the organisation of information, and everything else that goes with that, is something that will most likely be examined again and again as the web continues to mature.

Themed and niche engines, semantic organisation of information - is that the future of search? And what about social interaction, could that completely change how search engines perform. Hey, maybe the next generation of social bookmarking sites could become search engines too! And if that were to happen, you could certainly make the case that there would be just as much need for the sponsored post and link sales industries - with or without Google.

Another analogy that just crossed my mind. If you liken Digg to Google, which gives relatively few users a lot of traffic; you could liken Courtney’s BloggingZoom to a more focused, less all-encompassing search engine. Which is likely to send you more traffic if used properly, and consistently? Remember that most people cannot be exceptional.

Thinking about issues like that makes me excited about the impact that my blogging conversation system could have on these types of discussions - and guess what, it’s another type of social media, just not centralised!