The Future of Search
Filed Under Future of Search
Innovative definitions of search
Hello and welcome to Searchology.
First, search is really quite awful. It is terrible it in many, many ways. People take for granted just how bad it is and this is based on their experience with search. It’s not that good - most people don’t realize this. It is really quite nasty. I want to wake people up. I want to wake you up and I want to get you talking about search and really all the ways that it could be possibly improved and all the ways it actually works pretty well.
Second, there’s very little deep thinking about search. I’m talking about search from different perspectives like psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and the like. I’m not going to turn this into a graduate level lecture but I am going to take your mind in directions that it hasn’t gone before on the topic of search. More than anything else this is a story about search. It’s less about search engines, search companies and search tools and more about how people think about search and how fundamental questions haven’t been asked, let alone answered. It includes some seemingly random thoughts and ideas but all the while we’re talking about humans trying to find what they need, when they need it, how they need it, where they need it. Listen, the fundamentals have not been addressed. Indeed, your money on this report is well spent if I’ve kicked you hard enough to realize what search is about, what it could be and why it’s a dreadfully horrible experience - but this isn’t all bad. It’s merely an indication that we’re in the beginning chapters of the book on search. This report is meant to be a mind-expanding exercise in light of what I just said. I trust you’re going to enjoy it as much as I do so again welcome to Searchology - I’m you’re host for the show.
I built this report in a way that’s easy to digest no matter who you are, no matter where you’re located. This is a one-to-one experience and I’ll be trying to speak to you as an individual. I will be talking to you, you’ll be listening soaking it all in at your own pace, in your own way, in your own environment. Some parts are going to be rough, and I’ll mumble now and again - don’t worry; you can always rewind and listen again. You can also send me an email and contact me - plenty of ways to make your experience your own. The bottom line is that this is personal and is also very real. So what is Searchology? Is it the future of search? Are we going to talk about how to stay ahead of Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft? In part, all these things will be covered. First, before we dig in to the mind expanding pieces - the truly mind expanding pieces of Searchology - let’s talk about definitions.
Interestingly, the definitions I’m going to provide are going to be new. I’m hardly even going to touch on what people normally think of as search. This is going to be relatively unconventional. Again, this is a mind -expanding exercise; it’s a way of thinking about search in ways that other people haven’t. There’s plenty of good information out there about search engines, search companies, stock prices of those companies and so forth. There’s plenty of good information. What haven’t people explored? What is the scope of search, what does search mean? What’s the fundamental nature of search? What things have everyone missed? There’s plenty. We’re going to dig in now.
Search is a conversation. Conversation is about syntax and semantics - that means we’re talking about structure and meaning. This is all about structure and sequential patterns of interaction. It’s about language. Search is an interaction between the human and the search engine; between the human and the text box or the ‘Go’ or ‘Search’ button. It truly is a conversation. It requires language; searching requires the use of language and a give and take and that’s going to be a very strong theme in this first section. Search is a linguistic exercise, it’s about language there is a back and forth. There is a give and take between the user and the search engine and the user and the index of the search engine. Between the user the text box and the ‘Go’ button. Give and take, back and forth. There is turn taking involved. One of the key points here is that it’s nearly impossible or is very rare to put in a keyword - especially if it’s a single word versus a phrase. It’s very rare to put in a single word and get a perfect result. There’s a give and take. I put a word in - or a phrase in - I hit ‘Go Research’, I get a response back - not what I want. I try again - not what I want. I try again - not what I want. I’m foraging, I’m looking, I’m searching, I’m hunting but the conversation that I’m having may be a non-vocal or verbal conversation but a conversation nevertheless, because there is this turn taking. It’s as if I’m holding up a walkie-talkie, holding the button in, asking for something, letting go of the button and waiting for a response. Something does come back indeed - it’s a search results page. So again, give and take, back and forth.
Let’s dig into the second idea under the definition section Almost Defined. Search is a marketplace; via search, goods and services are exchanged. If nothing else, ideas and content are exchanged, so very much like a marketplace. More importantly, there is this market for ideas and content that captures those ideas and includes as well as the rankings of the content, rankings of material and rankings related to the products. If you are higher in the search results page, that has a higher ranking in the world of ideas. The best material wins by rising to the top. In one way or another whether that’s the search engine algorithm, whether someone places them at the top - whatever the mechanism is for placing that idea or content near the top of the engine. So there is a marketplace for that idea, and it is survival of the best content; that is unless you’re willing to pay, in that case you can pop the stack, go to the front of the line and be seen when that particular idea is being hunted for. So that’s the idea of money being associated with the idea hence more of this marketplace idea. Is search about money? In a sense yes, like other markets. So saying search is a marketplace does not necessarily imply search is a financial marketplace for dollars and cents, although that does play in. The point I want to make it’s a marketplace for ideas; it is a place for traders to gather. Traders of ideas, that being the people that are looking for the content, looking for the ideas, looking for the material and the people offering it - whether they know it or not. It could just be a simple blog entry; it could be a corporate page that someone’s trying to promote. No matter how you look at it, in this marketplace framework, traders are buying and selling. All traders in the marketplace are users and the key point - especially for those WebWord readers - is the user experience matters. It matters very much in this marketplace. Search as a marketplace is a key idea here.
Here is a third piece of the puzzle related to the definition we’re trying to establish here in Searchology. Search is mostly friction. Search is all about friction. If you had what you needed you wouldn’t need to search; every time a search is conducted it means that you don’t already have what you want. So it is a fall-back, it is a matter for relieving the pain of not having what you want. It’s painful to search. Pain indicates a certain level of friction. It takes time and effort to conduct a search; it’s not friction free, it’s not instant and it’s not entirely easy. So it’s not instant or easy therefore there’s a certain amount of friction. I would also add in here - I’m not going to deep dive on this but I want to make the point - we can measure the friction, we can measure the friction required related to a search by simply looking at the time that it takes for the user to begin the search all the way to the end when they find, perhaps yes or no, what they want. So, there are two pieces that are very easy - the duration or the time it takes the person to find whatever is they’re looking for, and then second of all, very obviously, do they actually find what they want? Do they get sidetracked? Are they successful or not? So we can actually measure fiction and it’s a measurement of the user experience that person has, with search. So again; third idea - search is mostly about friction.
Let’s explore the last idea here under the Definition section. Search is not discrete. Another way to say that is search is not digital. It’s kind of hard to specify the chunks that make up a search; there really aren’t chunks, it’s very analog, very up and down, very wave-like, very messy. The key reason for this is that humans are involved. In other words, there’s far less technology involved in search than what a lot of people would like you to believe. Search engines are all about sloppy, messy content, at least in terms of the experience. We’re all over the place as searchers. The engines are really all over the place; this is a non-linear exercise that we go through in each search. So when you conduct a search it’s probably not a one-time event. It’s very rare for you to put in a word or a series of words - a phrase - hit ‘Go’ or ‘Search’ on the search engine and get back the perfect result - that’s very rare. As we looked at before, as we discussed before, search is this conversation, it’s a marketplace, there is a give and take. You’re almost having a conversation, a literal conversation, with the search engine. You’re all over the place; it’s done in a non-linear fashion. It’s a series of events - very often you try one thing; it doesn’t work, you try another thing. That doesn’t work either so you try again, perhaps you get sidetracked. Perhaps you don’t, perhaps you’re distracted. Throwing your search into a bucket and trying to say, “this is my search”, is pretty difficult to do. We can do it to a point; we talked about search being friction and how we can measure from when the person begins their search to when they end and if they found what they wanted, but that’s pretty sloppy. What are the start and end points of a search - point A to point B?
Ok, so let’s wrap this section up, bring it together, bring it to closure. So that Almost Defined section, this ‘definition’ section - we talked about search as a conversation, the give and take, the conversation that occurs between the human and the search engine - the search technology. Search as a marketplace; a give and take, a trading, the traders that are involved. Search being friction - and last but not least - as we just covered now, search not being discrete, not being digital. Two key points out of all of this I think, my strong feeling here, we haven’t looked enough at the humanity of search, and associated with that, humans having a conversation in the light of search, a give and take - a ‘this for that’. That’s the key point.
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good so far…