Search: Vertical
Search News: Does Twitter Represent the Future of Search? Or is it The Other Way Around?
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Written By Peter Hershberg | January 20, 2009 | Share This
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An interesting online debate caught my attention this past weekend.
It started with Danny Sullivan’s Why Don’t Google & Yahoo Offer Twitter Search? Danny’s point is that people are increasingly turning to Twitter — rather than Google and Yahoo — when looking for information on breaking news. This is a trend we highlighted in our 2009 predictions post at the end of last year. For proof of Twitter’s real-time search capabilities all you need to do is look back at last week’s plane crash in the Hudson to see where the news initially broke. People were talking about the event for several minutes on Twitter before the first mentions of it on Google News or any major media site, for that matter.
With that in mind, I agree with Danny when he suggests it’s important that Google and Yahoo develop ways to search Twitter. Where we (may) disagree is over exactly what that would look like. Danny seems to be suggesting that the engines develop search services that are dedicated to searching Twitter. My own take is that while it’s important for Google and Yahoo to consider how Twitter could compliment their broader search services, it would be a mistake to create something solely Twitter-centric.
Search News: Hey Yahoo, Insert This!
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Written By Noah Mallin | January 8, 2009 | Share This
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Oh Yahoo, you’ve done it again. There was quite a bit of hubbub on the ol’ Intertrons for the last few days over a clause that Yahoo slipped into their search advertising Terms of Service agreements allowing them to fiddle about in advertiser’s search advertising campaigns. The collective cry of “Who elected you Don Draper?” has duly arisen, even in our own comments section.
While I hesitate to kick a search engine while it’s already rolling from side to side on the ground with its knees tucked in and its elbows over its ears there was an aspect of this seems under-reported. Namely – the fact that Yahoo’s meddling disproportionally affects small and medium sized advertisers.
Search Engines: Hold Your Vertical – Please!
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Written By Noah Mallin | January 6, 2009 | Share This
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Today, the so-called “conversation search engine” Artiklz was launched in beta form. Judging from it’s name and the copy on their landing page it was developed by a group of rogue LOLcats. As usual, us search geeks will play around with it, turn up our noses, and leave it on the trash heap along with Cuil and every other new search engine launched in the last several years. Dismissive much? Oh yeah. Why? Glad you asked.
The Year in Search and Social Media: Predictions 2009
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 31, 2008 | Share This
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After a tumultuous and fascinating 2008, what might be in store for 2009? We interrogated our best sources using enhanced techniques (bright lights, bamboo and the music of John Mayer were all deployed) before turning to the entrails of a goat (the vegans on our staff settled for an artichoke) to bring you our predictions for the world of search and social media in 2009. We make no guarantee of actuality. Void where prohibited.
In the Year 2009…
Horizontal is the New Vertical - The first wave of vertical search engines such as Business.com or Shopping.com was launched with the intention of starting search businesses from the get go. What’s interesting about the new breed of search engines is that they weren’t originally intended to be search engines at all. Instead, they were born out of the need to sift through the mass volume of content being produced on social media sites.
The need to retrieve and categorize user created content is already leading many social media platforms to become alternative and relevant search indices for specific needs beyond the general search engine results page. For example, Twitter search gives you visibility into “now”, Facebook search scours people (while LinkedIn offers more professionally oriented info), Flickr search delivers a better, more diverse image result set than Google images while YouTube features superior video search results.
Marketers will take notice of this trend to the horizontal in 2009 and these platforms will respond with more compelling SEM offerings to help lure them in.
The World of Online Ad Networks will Finally Consolidate – with many companies merging in an effort to survive, while others disappear altogether. This gives Google AdSense the opportunity to suck up even more of this market, resulting in:
1. Higher overall revenues for Google, but…
2. Lower revenue shares for smaller online publishers as Google takes a bigger cut of the pie and it becomes harder for them to monetize.
3. The collapse of online companies with no clear monetization plans.
Analytics becomes the Chocolate to Social Media’s Peanut Butter – Spending on social media marketing will rise despite the recession as more marketers discover useful analytics tools to measure success across the distributed web. Clients will be impressed by YouTube visitor counts, bit.ly’s url tracking and Omniture’s ability to track behavior in iPhone apps. This improved capability to test social media campaigns and see results before committing to major spends, helps open the floodgates and deliver real meaningful value - and revenue – for the first time.
Social Media Will Help Make Us Better Citizens - Phase one of online activism was powered by applications that allowed people to spread the word about their causes (e.g. Facebook “Causes”), phase two will be powered by microgiving services (e.g. Tipjoy and Microgiving) that allow people to put their money where their mouth is. As a result, funds given to charity through social networks will finally get more in line with the number of people who profess to be interested in them. The integration of Paypal into these services will help facilitate these transactions.
Furthermore, as the recession drags on and access to credit becomes increasingly difficult, Paypal will play a larger role in many online transactions including peer-to-peer lending, replacing some traditional banking services.
Is the Domain Friendfilter.com Taken? - As “friending” continues to gain momentum (and dilute its real life meaning), context becomes more important than ever. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed will need to empower users with more parametric filters so that they can publish – and parse - information to and from different groups of people. For example, a person may have various interests ranging from social software to hockey to comic books – giving that individual more control of the distribution and consumption process will eliminate noise from the social graph and provide more meaningful connections. The web is filled with nooks and crannies of niche content, so there’s no reason the social networks, or the ecosystem born of out of them (for instance, services like Stocktwits) shouldn’t better enable those subject specific communities.
Mobile Voice Search Increases its Long Tail – People don’t speak the same way they type – we tend to be fluid and wordy instead of terse and structured. When you mosey down to the car dealer to look for a new ride (or a “whip” as the kids call them), the tendency is to ask something like “What do you have that gets good mileage but can haul a kid’s bedroom set and won’t make me look like a total tool?” rather than to use Search-ese like “SUV, fuel efficient?” Therefore, it stands to reason that as voice recognition software creeps into mobile search apps, the searches we conduct on our cell phones are going to start to look a lot less like those from traditional search engines. Spoken questions are longer and phrased differently than online search. Advertisers who hope to simply use their existing search keyword lists to reach mobile users are going to be in for a surprise.
Then again, we might be getting ahead of ourselves – 2009 will not be the year that advertising for voice search takes off. The user experience still needs too much work for mainstream adoption.
Yahoo is Broken Up – No year-end list is complete without a gratuitous Yahoo swipe – here’s ours: Microsoft reunites many Yahoo search refugees’ posteriors with their former chairs by acquiring Yahoo’s search business at a fire sale price.
The Phrase “Google Killer” Will Become the New “Munson” – The term becomes synonymous in hip-hop to describe a hyped young rapper who steps to the big guns only to come up short and be forgotten. When was the last time you used Cuil?
Mobile Gets More Social - Time spent logging into social networks from a mobile device will approach 50% of total time spent on social networks in ‘09. In a related event, incidences of hit and run accidents and people walking into open manhole covers will rise dramatically in ‘09 as they use their fancy new iPhones and G1 Android phones to throw snowballs at each other on Facebook.
Google TV Ties Together Recessionary Threads – The two most resilient places for advertising in a recession turn out to be search and TV. How convenient for Google’s fledging offline ad biz as the search model of targeting, accountability, and responsiveness continues to migrate to offline platforms in ‘09. The timing is now.
Fame is Measured in 140 Characters Instead of 15 Minutes – Twitter celebs (plane crash guy, Egyptian jail guy) find fame far more fleeting in ‘09 – it lasts as long as it takes to refresh your screen.
Facebook Connect Takes Off – Brands and marketers embrace the ability to use Facebook Connect as a way to socialize websites cheaply. In fact, it’s already starting to.
Twitter Will Surprise Their Critics With Their Ability to Monetize – We’d explain what that monetization plan will look like in more detail, but unfortunately, we only have 140 characters.
The Future of Search: Will Fragmented Search Mean Death by a Thousand Shards for GooHoo?
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 18, 2008 | Share This
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So I’m stalking this girl who rejected me in high school and Google just isn’t delivering the detailed, timely information I need to stake out her current place of residence and/or job. What’s a mentally imbalanced loner to do?
This morning my colleague Ruth Nightengale, Vice President of Account Management at Reprise Media, sent me a blog post by Marci Albomer at the New York Times. Well Marci, you’re now on the shortlist to get your own dedicated shrine in my apartment thanks to drawing my attention to pipl.com. Pipl bills itself as “The most comprehensive people search on the web” and claims to trawl the “Deep Web.” The Deep Web is not the part of the web where Foucault discussion groups live (though it can be), rather it’s the equivalent to dark matter on the net, great gobs of unindexed material that the search engines don’t see. You’ve also got to love the testimonial banner on the top of pipl’s homepage. That’s gonna come back to haunt somebody at the trial…
2008 Searchviews Predictions
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 21, 2007 | Share This
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In yesterday’s post, we outlined what happened in search and social media in 2007, and why it mattered. Today we’re looking to the year ahead, and making some industry predictions for 2008.
Topline? Searchviews predicts that 2008 will be the year that:
- The concept of paying for online content ceases to exist
- “Open” platforms and a free social graph become more meaningful concepts - with implications for mobile and government
- Mobile Internet will have a big impact on content and its distribution
- Search gets truly social and smaller engines get a chance to shine
- Privacy becomes a much bigger concern
Here’s the breakdown:
The concept of paying for online content ceases to exist
- The success of the NYTimes’ dismantling of TimesSelect means Rupert Murdoch & Co. get smart and go free with the WSJ this year - and everyone else will have to follow suit.
- YouTube will stop getting sued and start signing huge video advertising deals.
- But: The music industry will continue to be heavy-handed and litigious rather than figure out how to effectively monetize music online – Notably, we predict that the music industry will go after the excellent Hype Machine, instead of recognizing how valuable it is as a promotional aggregator.
“Open” networks and a free social graph become actionable and meaningful concepts - with implications for mobile and government
- All new web services will be expected to have an open API.
- Remaining US wireless networks will open up, too. By the end of the year, we’ll hear some announcements of the industry shifting considerably to allow users to use any phone on any network.
- U.S. citizens will get better access to government records online.
- Government officials will start to adopt social networking/blogging as new point of communication with constituents. In other words, social networking and blogging won’t just be an election gimmick anymore, but a real point of communication between politicians and people (but, watch out - we also predict that at least one politician will suffer serious online backlash by ignoring search & social media best practices).
Mobile Internet will have a big impact on content and its distribution
- As mobile browsing/Internet access becomes more prevalent, microblog formats (Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) in aggregate will exceed Blogger in users.
- Content will get shorter.
- RSS adoption will start to hit the mainstream
- GPS capabilities (a la Google Mobile Maps) will be critical to mobile’s impact - especially for locally-focused social media sites.
Search gets truly social and smaller engines get a chance to shine
- Ask.com will pick up steam, and IAC will buy vertical engines to blow it out – watch out, Live.com!
- Yahoo’s Kickstart will fold and they will quit trying to build social networks from the ground up – they will finally figure out personalized Yahoo start pages have the beginnings of social network profiles and just let people link to each other that way.
- Similarly, Google will get its social network act together, leveraging iGoogle and Google Profiles to do it. Dare we hope for the end of Orkut?
- Myspace will lose ground to Facebook, becoming lost in the wind like Friendster. Or…
- Facebook will acquired outright by Google or Yahoo. Or…
- Facebook will make a really big mistake (compromising user privacy in an unforgivable way) and see a mass user-exodus.
- Veoh.com will gain heavy exposure for video sharing and become a competitor to YouTube.
- Facebook Beacon will get more sophisticated and start to monetize.
- Niche social networks will emerge as big players, and engines (specifically Yahoo) go on a spending spree. Niches to look out for: moms, pets, shopping, and healthcare.
Privacy becomes a much bigger concern
- Consolidation will occur in the people search space (e.g., ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, Spock, etc.).
- Pipl.com will freak people out.
- Companies will be expected to prioritize user fears/the illusion of privacy above the value of data they’re collecting.
More predictions for 2008? Add them to our comments below, or give us a shoutout on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/searchviews.
AOL Launches Investing Site with Financial Search Engine
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | November 29, 2007 | Share This
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AOL launched a slick new money and finance site yesterday, implementing Relegence, a financial search engine it purchased last year to totally overhaul the old AOL Money. Search Engine Land reports:
Roughly a year ago, AOL acquired Relegence a search technology company that offers real-time information and data feeds on a subscription basis to Wall Street professionals. Now AOL is bringing the fruits of that acquisition to a newly redesigned Money & Finance site intended to go head to head with Yahoo Finance, which is the current market leader…
Beyond the financial information, however, this is a great news service that can deliver alerts on subjects or companies via RSS or email. And AOL intends to use the underlying Relegence technology on other properties.
More from the AOL press release:
The site’s real-time streaming company news is provided by Relegence, which was acquired by AOL in 2006, and is the market’s leading financial news and information search engine. With Relegence-powered real-time market-moving news and information, AOL(R) Money & Finance now offers the fastest and most comprehensive intelligence about North American equities, giving users access to more than 3,000 news and information sources including national and regional print coverage, trade publications, government sources and blogs in a customizable interface.
It will be interesting to see how Relegence will change other sections of AOL, though obviously the initial implementation in finance makes the most sense.
In other biz tech news this week, NASDAQ launched its Internet Index, but apparently they deemed Microsoft and News Corp not worthy of it - majorly dissing MSN and MySpace, respectively. From Read/Write Web:
The leading companies include Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, IAC/InterActiveCorp. It also includes international companies, like Baidu and Sohu from China. As Josh noted earlier today though, curiously absent are sites like Microsoft and News Corp. - who control some of the most popular properties on the Internet (MSN/Live and MySpace/FIM respectively). These companies many not be only Internet companies, but their impact on the web is undeniably enormous.
Take heart, Ballmer and Murdoch: Maybe it’s a work in progress.
Libraries Reject Google Book Search
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | October 22, 2007 | Share This
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The New York Times today reported that some libraries are not signing on with Google’s Book Search project because of the engine’s restrictions limiting access to the books it digitizes, including asking libraries to make “the material unavailable to other commercial search services.”
Though Google scans books for free, some libraries are choosing instead to scan their collections with the Open Content Alliance, ensuring free and open access to the books scanned - at a cost of about $30 per book. Started in 2005 by Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, the Open Content Alliance counts Yahoo and Microsoft as members, though the latter now also has a restriction similar to Google’s for non-academic users.
Google has always said aims to index all the world’s knowledge, which certainly fits the aims of the lofty book scanning project. However, the company also purports that its motto is “don’t be evil”… and it’s certainly a bit shifty to put up walls to book access. Mashable notes:
It seems that a public, open index like the Open Content Alliance promotes would ultimately give users the most choice. Nonetheless, Google is certainly helping bring lots of important content online by digitizing books for free. However, by participating in the Open Content Alliance, Google would both be improving book search for everyone, while also bringing more content into its index (and, likely generating more profits). Let’s hope the company has a change of heart.
Yahoo! “Passionista” Study Makes Case for Social Media, Search
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | September 26, 2007 | Share This
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Yahoo and MediaVest just released their findings from a joint a study about consumers they’re calling “passionistas,” or people defined as “highly-engaged consumers…much more likely than typical consumers to create and share content online about their passions and the brands associated with them.”
Their catch-phrase is just a titch gimmicky (no more -ista endings, please!) but according to their study, these consumers spend six times more time at topically interesting sites than the typical user, visit such sites three times more often, and are more likely to try new brands related to their interests. From the press release:
Passionistas seek relevant and timely information, including ads that look and feel like content, email subscriptions and RSS feeds, and customized suggestions from vendors like Amazon or Netflix. They hold their brands to a high standard – and expect intelligent advertising, new approaches and authenticity. These consumers are more likely than average to remix content as a way to play with a brand, using online tools that make it increasingly easy for them to create movies, songs or slideshows to share with their friends.
That’s a compelling case for why social media marketing works, especially as the study also notes that these consumers are also 52% more likely to be brand evangelists. Combine that with the study’s finding that “passionistas” also search a whopping 184% more frequently than their dispassionate counterparts, and you have a case for tightly integrating search and social media marketing efforts - first to reach these users and then to converse with them.
Google and Microsoft Eyeing Job Search
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | May 9, 2007 | Share This
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Both Google and Microsoft are reportedly looking into job search sites. Last week, there was some speculation that Google had its eye on SimplyHired, and then today, Microsoft announced its purchased of a minority equity stake in CareerBuilder.
For Microsoft, the alliance with CareerBuilder is an extension of their existing business relationship. From the press release,
“The relationship between Microsoft and CareerBuilder began in January 2004 when CareerBuilder became the exclusive job search engine for the MSN Careers channel in the U.S. CareerBuilder’s monthly traffic grew by nearly 10 million unique visitors from 2003 to 2004 with MSN contributing a significant portion of the increased traffic…The new agreement is also performance-based with financial payments driven by the quality and quantity of traffic delivered. The new agreement provides for an extension to 2013, whereby CareerBuilder will pay MSN up to $443 million over the course of seven years to serve as the exclusive job search engine on the MSN Careers channel.”
The Google/SimplyHired deal, on the other hand, is a rumored full acquisition. As alarm:clock writes,
“Simply Hired almost seems like it was built to be acquired by Google. Its angels are GOOG angels, its based in Mountain View, it targets the long tail and landed a MySpace deal, and Google doesn’t have a job search tool.”
The suggestion that Google’s mere lack of a job search tool implicates their intent to buy is a little weak. As VCRatings points out, SimplyHired doesn’t fit with Google’s other recent acquisitions,
“Google has acquired a lot of companies in the past six years and a grand total of two were focused on search. This is something Google does best and doesn’t need to go outside the Googleplex for in all but the most bleeding edge of cases.”