Internet Librarian: Wednesday Keynote: Future of Search

Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land


Future of search: Hard to predict since two key things I expected to happen have happened!

1. Personalized results


2. Blended results

Challenges with search engines are how to automatically get you into the right search engines into the right specialized search when you search for something like 'pictures of Italy'

Federated seach hits the web, AKA:

• Meta search


• Universal Search


• 3D/ Morph


• Answers


• Shortcuts

Blended results or Blended search - multiple resources into one kind of search.

Google Universal Search: May 2007

• Automatically queries: books, images, news, video, local + web


• More sources added in the future


• Relevancy of each vertical "silo" assessed and measured against others

For the typical searcher no one is going to know what Google is doing, but on the front end it presents information that is relevant from all of the top searches - web, video, local results, news, maps, etc. These results replace web results so you still receive ten results on your page, it's just that some of them are from other specialized searches. Videos can be watched on the Google search page if you click the +; Maps inserted at the top with local hotels + businesses

Vertical Search: Only want to hit 'news information' or a specific slice of the search; Horizontal Search: hits everything from all search

ASK 3D & "Morph": June 2007

• 2 "pane" design


• 3rd pane uses "Morph" algorithm to search relevant verticals


• Blogs, news, news images, video, Wikipedia, dictionary, more

Microsoft Life: September 2007

• Pushing Microsoft Answers


• Health, shopping, entertainment/Celebrities, local


• Smart Motion Video Previews - 30 Second summary of the video

Celebrity xRank - From Microsoft

Yahoo: October 2007
Pushing Yahoo Shortcuts: Events, music, movies, travel, sports, health, shopping, businesses, and restaurants

Blended Overview

• Verticals will become more prominent


• Metaphor/presentation still being worked out


• Ask 3D didn't generate boost; toolbar download did, and now iWon ramp-up


• Live saw gains through "Search Club"

Will Crawlers Survive? (November 2002 Slide)

• Link analysis saved them from drowning in spam


• Now link manipulation has become issue


• Bloggers: Let's "googlebomb" to help sites we like


• Site owners: Let's create artificial link networks


• Site owners: Let's just get links Google "likes"


• SearchKing (and others): We got good links for sale!

Personalization of results - people get custom tailored solutions - makes it harder for sites to spam

Personalization Influencers: Google Personalized Home Page content - Google Bookmarks - Search history (clicks) - Web history (visits)

Facebook
Social Graph (ugh) / social network data is potential useful: Watch what others are searching on - but who are your friends?

Mahalo - Topically targeted pages: Top seven: selected by human beings

Overall the Future:
Verticals will continue to grow
Personalization will continue to be helpful although there will be privacy issues
Social may play a role
7 out of 10 Americans have "Search Engine Fatigue" - 72% expereience "Search engine fatigue" (either always, usually, are sometimes) when researching
65% percent say they've spent two or more hours in a single sitting searching

Search Engine Land - website
http://searchengineland.com

SearchCap:
http://searchengineland.com/searchcap.php

Daily Search Cap:
http://www.dailysearchcast.com