The Future of Personal Trainer Directories

Search engines are so familiar to us that most people don't give them a second thought. A personal trainer directory however, is not something one would immediately think about when looking for a personal trainer online.

When we need to to find something out, and we Google it. To Google has become the generic term for the search activity, just as Fedex is to send courier shipments, and to hoover is to vacuum the floor.

Yet we are set to see a complete change in the way search engines work. At the moment, the technology is still, frankly, out of the computing ark, compared to what it's going to be within the next ten years. When we need to find something out, we 'Google' it and we're confronted with millions of results in a matter of seconds.

Let's say we are interested in finding a personal trainer. We search for a personal trainer listing for our area, in the hopes of finding some recommendations. We'll probably come up with a whole lot of irrelevant fitness listings, because web masters have become intensely savvy about search engine optimization.

From the user perspective, we want search engines to deliver a precise answer to our questions. From the point of view of web masters, they want to deliver their site to anyone who might be vaguely interested.

Let's look at the example of the personal trainer directory. The web master thinks, "Anyone who is interested in a fitness directory, might be interested in my yoga mats." So he works out how he can use tags and content in his website which will rank it high in the listings when someone is searching for a personal trainer listing. It's worth making the effort, because some of the time, hey, he might just make a sale.

Search engine algorithms are broken by sophisticated web masters daily, and this goes against the needs of the user. When we search, we want what we want, not what someone else wants to give us. The internet is almost inconceivably vast, and yet it is used by humans to achieve human ends – which are sometimes in competition.

From the user's point of view, we need search engines to be more savvy than this. And already, they are starting to "learn" how to deliver better results. For example, I keep fit and search a lot for fitness related stuff. So the search engine can learn that when presented with a choice between say, a site that sells fitness equipment, and one which educates, I'm going to choose the latter. Results can be refined so I get the exact listing I need, or close enough.

In future, the internet of things will be recruited to make my searches even more accurate. Every object I use will be capable of delivering data about how I use it. So if my car gets a slow puncture when I'm on a trip, it's going to deliver me information on the nearest tyre repair place, before I even start to search.

Down the line, searches will be activated by voice recognition, and even by thought waves. Think that's nonsense? Well think again. A researcher has already sent a brain message to a prosthetic limb on the other side of the planet, and directed it to hold his wife's hand. It's not science fiction, it's a coming reality. Computers as we know them are actually on their way into history as I write.

Searches will soon automatically be translated into all available languages, so that the best results can be delivered regardless of the language they are published in, and of course, those results will be in the appropriate translated language. Also, we won't just have written media delivered to us, but video, pictures, sound – anything which is relevant to our search.

So in future, search engines will be much smarter, deliver more precise results, will be accessible constantly through the internet of objects and virtual reality devices, and will deliver results in a wide variety of ways. One of which will almost certainly be relying on a well maintained personal trainer directory for excellent search engine results.

Institute of Personal Trainers. The only not for profit personal trainer directory to support personal trainers with all of their online marketing needs.

Institute of Personal Trainers. The only not for profit personal trainer directory to support personal trainers with all of their online marketing needs.

www.instituteofpersonaltrainers.com