A recent trend amongst people today is that no one ever remembers a phone number. If you were to ask me the numbers of anyone in my mobile phone’s phone book I wouldn’t even be able to recite three of them. Now that mobile phones have become a vital part of western culture our habits have started to change. Why would we want to remember anyone’s phone number when we can search their name on our phone book?

Another recent trend, this time on the Internet is misspelled URL’s. If you’ve ever embraced this Web 2.0 thing all these Bloggers and marketing people have been ramming down our throats you’ll have seen a ton of Digg’s, Flickr’s, Tumblr’s, etc. This is simply down to an extreme lack of available URL’s! On a more personal note, do you know how lucky I felt to find the domain CodingFresh.com?! It took me weeks to find this domain and once I had I rushed to purchase it. I don’t think I’ve ever typed card details in so fast in my entire life.

In Japan it seems they’ve taken another route towards locating websites. They use Search Engines!

Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television. The trend? No more printed URL’s. The replacement? Search boxes! With recommended search terms!

In a way, aren’t we doing the same? Google already seems to control the search market with an iron fist, with nearly every web user using Google to locate whatever content they desire. As an example, tell one of your friends to go to the BBC News website. Are they using Google to get to it?

With everyone and their Dog using Google to access web pages could it be possible for us to use search terms to allow users to access our web pages? Instead of advertising a URL could it not be easier to place an image of a Google search box with a relevant search term inside of it?

The idea is a novel one, but not all that great. Firstly, this method more than likely works well for the Japanese because of their written language structure. I do not claim to be an expert in Japanese but I am pretty sure that URL’s would be impossible for them. Secondly, what’s to stop some clever SEO-types from hijacking a search term for marketing purposes? It’s similar to the old AOL advertising campaigns, where businesses would use AOL keywords to allow users to automatically access their web pages.

Perhaps it’s the way of the future? Soon many countries around the world will be sporting their very own IDN ccTLD’s, and we’ll require either methods of typing in those domains or keeping a database of these terms. In a way, this would make Google Searches our second URL, perhaps phasing out the first batch.