I attended the Xconomy Forum: The Future of Search and Information Discovery. The panelists included Brian Bershad, Seattle Site Director for Google, and Harry Shum, Corporate Vice President of Search Product Development for Bing.
I had a question last night that I didn't get a chance to ask. Sort of like the kid in the back of the class that that got left when the bell rang... here it is.
Why are the advanced search features, particularly those available in Google, not more prominent? Specifically, nearly every "problem" that "can not be solved in search today" could be solved by using Google's advanced search features.
So, here are 4 "hard to solve" problems, which were mentioned by our panelists (I am not exactly sure who, as I was sitting too far back--please help me out if you remember) that I was able to have great results for in less than 60 seconds for all 4 searches.
1. "You can't find NFL Quarterbacks in Twitter."
Really? Type ["NFL Quarterbacks" site:twitter.com] in the Google Search Bar.
2. Steve Hall with Vulcan Capital, "What if you don't know what looking for? Show me news in general about computer science professors. Can't do that on Bing or Google." In Google you can. Enter [computer science professors inurl:news].
3. Oren Etzioni Professor of Computer Science at University of Washington, "I can imagine a day in the not too distant future, something that takes hours can happen in minutes. Have an engine that understands semantics, including what's being said in reviews -- positive review, negative?" How about today? For positive reviews, [sun valley ~good inurl:reviews]. For negative reviews, switch out the word good for bad. If you'd like to compare Sun Valley and Blackcomb lodging with prices in the $200 to $600 dollar range, type ["sun valley" OR Blackcomb ~lodge $200..$600 inurl:reviews].
4. I think it was Ken Myer, CEO of Washington Technology Industry Association, who mentioned that when he gets home he is going to look up the score of the Monday night Football game, and is going to get that morning's news. He clearly was not planning on clicking on the "Show options" features, then recent results, in Google.
Sure, there is a lot of room for venture capitalists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, to get together and come up with more elegant solutions. But for the time being, knowing how to use Google's advanced search features can let you solve nearly every search problem that was discussed last night.
Finally, as if the above where not enough of a case to wonder why there has never been any demonstration on using advanced search features, I will finish this rather long winded question with the following observation: Jan Pedersen, with Microsoft Core Search is quoted in The Huntington Post as saying, "A small fraction of the queries you do -- around 5 percent -- actually take up almost half the time you spend on searching." On Google's help page, there is a bit of a disclaimer when introducing the advanced search features, "Have in mind though that even very advanced searchers, such as the members of the search group at Google, use these (advanced search) features less than 5% of the time." If that 5% of the time saves them half the time the rest of humanity spends searching, isn't it worthwhile to do some training? Just because people use Google, or Bing, doesn't mean that they know how to.
I extend a complimentary single user license of the Boost eLearning Google Search Training course to Greg and the rest of the panelists. Just email me at jeff@boostelearning.com. Or Tweet me, @BoosteLearning . I look forward to hearing your responses.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Thanks for the insightful comments. My point about the semantic search example was slightly different. That is, Google does not know the names of specific computer science professors. So if there was a reference to the two words "Oren Etzioni" there is no semantic query called "all computer science professors" that would have picked that up - you would need to match the specific keyword syntax. Similarly, my point about NFL quarterbacks on Twitter...if a tweet mentions "Brett Farve" and I am interested in all tweets that mention ANY NFL quarterback by name, you can't do that search today. You'd need a semantic database that knows that Brett Favre = NFL Quarterback.
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your response, and for refining your intent in the question. It was worthwhile to wait a day to get such a thoughtful response.
It is true that that the there is a need for semantic search to fill in the needs you describe. The ability to "discover" has a way to go (although I think the "Find pages similar to the page" on the Google advanced search page helps when trying to find prospects that are similar to your current customers).
At the same time, much of the search field focuses on what companies can do to create a better user experience, rather than enabling the user to understand and use the tools that are already available. I think there is an unbalance there.