The Dark Net - A Unique Marketing Challenge

Since I’m currently studying digital marketing for the master’s degree I mentioned in an earlier post, I thought it would be highly useful to start researching how digital marketing works in relationship to the “deep Web.” Unless it’s part of your job description to know what the deep Web is and what’s available there, most people have likely never even heard of it. We think the Web where we can easily access anything via Google is the only one that exists, but this portion, known as the “surface Web” is just the tip of the iceberg. According to How the Deep Web Works, about 40 percent of the world’s population uses the Web this way and we are none the wiser.

Image courtesy of http://projectpdr.com/deep-web-myth-reality/

The surface Web is the indexed portion of the entire Web where a search engine’s “crawlers” are programed to return results for our somewhat generic keyword queries. However, because of this programming, these queries only return about .04% of the entire Internet (source, OEDb). The remaining portion, that which is invisible to us because they cannot be indexed by search engines, is called the “deep Web.” Although impossible to accurately measure, it is estimated to be at least 500 times bigger than the surface.

This is a massively untapped resource. The deep Web’s data is not purposely unavailable, it’s just very difficult to access. That’s why businesses determined to maintain a competitive edge outsource the data mining portion of their marketing efforts to companies that specialize in deep Web information extraction and analysis.

A portion of this deep Web is the illicit and much more elusive, “dark Web” or “dark Net.” This is the underground of the Internet and most closely associated with illegal activity. Although there is plenty of that, it is also a place for people to flee to as the growing reach of government surveillance becomes an increasing concern. From a digital marketing perspective, I’m most curious about the dark Web portion, which is accessible only via a special network (The Onion Router Project or TOR) that removes encryption layers so users and communications remain anonymous and essentially untraceable.

Aside from the benefits of avoiding surveillance, I imagine some of the appeal in using this dark Web is finding freedom from the increasingly intrusive and mostly inescapable ads and corporate marketing that fill our lives. So, if not a single site is indexed and there’s no way to track user data of any kind, how will businesses handle the challenge of this marketing black hole as more and more people dive into the dark for an experience specifically free of this presence?
For anyone wanting to learn more about the deep Web and how you can access and search invisible content as well as optimize the chances of your content being found, check out The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web.