February 28, 2006
ZDnet reports on a panel at the Wharton Technology Conference in Philadelphia on ideas about the future of search according to "the big three" in the industry. There’s some striking disagreements on what path search interface and technology will be taking -
to Google, the big changes will be in the information architecture and analysis algorithms back-end of search engines. Yahoo says that they see the innovative techniques of "social search" will be the next big change - the ideas behind technology like Digg, which bases it’s front page stories on human votes.
MSN had a very different take on the next path:
Search engines have shot themselves in the foot by providing a search box, where users provide relatively little information. Over the next 5 years we will see significant improvements in how [user interfaces] operate.
Saleel Sathé, quoted by ZDnet.co.uk
MSN’s representative suggests that the path for a better search engine is through a richer user interface - one more like a human librarian, which will, presumably, interact with the user to refine and polish their search.
This idea may be great - it depends on how it’s structured. Already, there are search interfaces which are a mass of boxes, menus, and check boxes which allow you to construct very detailed searches - but I sincerely hope this is not what MSN is intending! Perhaps they’re looking at an AJAX style interface, where you can begin a search and continuously refine it to narrow your results live. Perhaps they want a truly interactive interface, which will ask you logical questions based on terms you enter to help you focus the search.
Perhaps the engineers at MSN have something incredible under their sleeves - or maybe they’re just looking to deviate from the "one search" model which Google has popularized. Either way, the future of search could have some interesting new
possibilities.
Although I have to say I don’t care much for their brand name, Dumbfind has certainly got an interesting idea. This new search engine, currently in Beta, is offering a subtly different advertising scheme for contextual advertising.
Their product is designed around the popular "taggin" which is done for blog posts on Technorati, for links on Ma.gnolia and “Del.icio.us and for images with Flickr. The idea is that you pick a few tags for you advertisement, and your ads will be delivered to sites and search results pages which are related to those tags.
Unlike all the sites I mention above, the tags at Dumbfind will not be produced by human decision - instead, the search engine will automatically analyze the sites and apply tags.
For the advertiser, the advantage is that you will not be picking specific keywords where your ad will only be shown for that set of searches. Instead, you can pick a few tags that are relevant to your product and have all searches which results in pages with those tags bring up your ad.
If the Dumbfind tagging algorithm really works, this could be a great product. If not, well . . . there are a lot of search engines, and a lot of great ideas at the feet of crumbled businesses. The biggest question for me is how carefully they’ll be able to protect against spam sites - it all comes down to their tagging algorithm.
While in Beta, the site is offering a promotional deal for free ads. Any free ad created during this promotional period will last for 60 days - at no charge. It can hardly hurt to experiment with the site right now!
As is to be expected, the signal-to-noise ratio at Search Engine Strategies was pretty high. Information was thoroughly covered on a LOT of topics. I’ll start at the top: the keynote speech.
Barry Diller, the CEO of IAC, the parent company to Ask.com, gave the keynote address. The most interesting coverage of this speech is posted at Search Engine Journal, where Loren Baker posts the notes he received from Web Ad.vantage, Inc. president Hollis Thomases.
I’m not going to write a lot about the speech itself - it talks extensively about the rebranding of Ask Jeeves and makes a few comments about the issues of developing a search brand. Instead, I’m going to write about the written coverage of SES NYC.
Like the post from Loren Baker, much of the coverage of a conference is based on rapidly scribbled notes which are rapidly turned into blog posts with very little editing. The example from Loren is extreme - he’s just posted somebody else’s notes altogether, since he wasn’t able to attend himself. But other coverage, such as SE Round Table’s coverage of the "Vertical Creep" session are through-written, but quite low on correct grammar and editing.
This is the fight to stay most current - to make certain you keep your readers at your site rather than sending them off to the competitors who’ve posted more information. I want to avoid this - I’m not hesitating to send visitors off to better articles and coverage than I can provide. I’m not in New York City - my coverage is, of necessity, second hand information.
Sometimes I’m going to try and refine the information, when posts are just not that well written. I’d rather take the time for a couple well written posts than really "complete" coverage.
- Technorati has blog reports here: sesny2006
- See shared photos on Flickr here:
sesny2006
- See bookmarked pages on del.icio.us here:
sesny2006
- See saved pages on Yahoo My Web 2.0 here:
sesny2006
- Find live coverage and discussion at the Search Engine Watch
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