We're now recognizing a much broader range of ads than we initially included in our marketing experiment. And when we recognize a print ad, we return web search results. While in the experiment, we return a specific link to an external website.

This is Google talking about their updates to Goggles. They now also support barcodes. In my experimentation of barcode scanning apps, all of them are in the early days, so it makes sense for Google to start experimenting here as well.

But the snippet above, talking about print ads, is what is interesting to me.

How long will it take for QR codes or other barcode technology to be deployed broadly to print, retail, and other offline elements?

A long time. So Goggles is a bridge that starts adding the most pervasive piece of the Internet – permalinks – to print / visual products. Now, as a brand owner, retailer, or other "owner" of some of this material, how do I "register" my permalink with Google?

If I can't, then how the heck do I accomplish SEO for these print ads?

Update: I'm also interested in what ThingLink is up to. Here's a recent post about embedding links / context directly into images, which like the Google technology, skips tags / QR codes completely. Feels a little farther out there, but definitely something to keep an eye on.

Interesting times.