Search Sense

Before I begin I have a confession - I am a Google fan through-and-through. It’s natural results have become the benchmark of the search industry. The results are relevant, it’s intuitive and quick to use and I can’t find a better alternative. But I am also a fan of Wikipedia and Knol worries me.

It’s a no-brainer right? Let’s monetise, sorry ‘organise’, the world’s information.

Since the phenomenal success of the most effective new advertising system for a century, Google Adwords, search engines have been monetising every bit of real estate they can lay their hands on. Yahoo! decided that it’s ‘natural’ results could be bought by advertisers using it’s ‘feed’ system, and everyone tried placing CPC adverts in a variety of locations. Natural results in Google, however, have been left largely untouched and advert-free.

Hmm, well Google does place news, images and videos (via youtube) within the search results - all of which have differing degrees of Adwords penetration. Late last week our friends at Mountain View added a new way of getting into their own search results via Knol. Details as yet are thin on the ground, but we know that select authors are being invited to write articles within their area of expertise ‘to find a way to help people share their knowledge‘… Sounds like a more ivory tower like version of Wikipedia to me.. But with Adwords, and close to the top of the natural results guaranteed?

The guys are Techcrunch are debating this under the heading ‘Google knol a step too far?’ It’s worth a look.

Personally I think that Google will make Knol earn it’s place in natural results fairly but at a cost to commercially orientated websites, many of which have been forced to invest more into the Adwords campaigns over the past few years as a result of algorithm tweaks…

The process of organising the world’s information just got a bit more lucrative, I think.

There’s still a huge amount of technical language surrounding web 2.0, including the phrase itself… This week I had to present my thoughts on the future of digital to a large group of senior executives at a European airline. I decided that APIs (application programming interfaces) really translate into the new Aggregators of Personal Information. Once viewed in this way we start to look at our own data assets in a different and more human way. I think that leads to excitement, engagement from the marketing mind, and ultimately engagement of people’s attention.

It’s been a long week, that’s it for today.

I’m a regular user of MSN and Yahoo Answers. I like asking obscure questions of experts and rating the results.

We at Spannerworks love observing/benefiting from the synergies that emerge when various technologies, products and people fuse together e.g. algorithmic search with social search, user tagged or user generated content.

When you and I contribute our opinions about products, services or websites rather than solely algorithmic assessment (granted a very smart algorithm), it adds so much to the relevancy of search engine results.

This appeal of humans and technology is one of the many reasons we have a content and social media division.

So it was with great interest that I read about Cha Cha going into Beta. Cha Cha is a search engine launched a couple of months ago that fuses “expert” tagged results with algorithmic assessed relevancy and also provides a “live search” feature.

This “live” feature is where you can conduct a search in partnership with a human expert assisting via an instant messaging session – in fact one of an ever increasing number of experts – currently about 20,000 worldwide.

They will help you refine your results, provide personal views upon results, products or services.

The idea is superb, and we wish it all the best. I for one will keep a watch out for it’s success or adoption by others. Check it out here.

An informal arrangement to provide MySpace users with search results, this week firmed up into a formal partnership… (more…)

This morning’s Media Guardian features a thought piece from Magic Lantern’s Anthony Lilley that had my head nodding a long in agreement. (more…)