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Search Vendors Should Focus. Okay, Mom

Internet Evolution ran a story called “Search Vendors Should Focus on Real Enterprise Needs.” I like the “should” write ups. These are parental and provide the type of inputs that my mother used to offer me when I was a child in Campinas, Brazil. My mother would say, “Be careful.” We lived adjacent a jungle in which resided poisonous snakes, wild pigs, and various spiders that could drop from the tree canopy and chow down. A dip in a pond would allow leeches to burrow into my fat, 12-year old body like truckers eating waffles at the International House of Pancakes. Yep, “Be careful.”

Mother never left the house. She stayed behind the 10 foot walls topped with glass, secure with the maid, the gardener, and the cook. She wanted to be back in the Midwest where shopping for groceries did not involve watching the butcher kill the cow in the back of the store and bring in fresh meat in response to her request for prime rib. Right, “Be careful.” We drank “filtered water”, delivered each week by a local vendor. Drinking the stuff from the tap when water flowed was an invitation to serious misery.

So, “Search Vendors Should Focus on Real Enterprise Needs” reminded me of my mother’s attempt to enforce so weird Midwestern behavior on a kid who was trying to figure out the wild, wonderful world of Brazil in the 1950s. My world was not her world, and I think the author’s world is not the world of the company that develops, markets, and supports enterprise search systems.

The main idea of the write up is that enterprise search vendors are focusing on unreal needs. The only problem is that the write up talks about eCommerce, which is a subset of search. Enterprise search is a subset of search, and although one can integrate search and eCommerce search in one system, I try to keep the two systems apart.

This passage caught my attention:

Search today depends on human action. No matter the level of sophistication we choose, Google’s splash page includes perhaps the best phrase for our expectations: “I’m Feeling Lucky.” We poor end users have no idea what is going on in the algorithms of Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. We still feel in awe that anything remotely like what we are looking for manages to show up in the search results. We also feel like information delivery is stuck on some Web 2.0 treadmill, content to just react to our queries with a mundane lists of URLs.

The write up shifts to the weird world of search engine optimization. Now I agree that search depends on human action, because humans build systems and humans want information. However, many systems perform automated functions to reduce the cost of delivering information a human wants or may want.

The article concludes with this statement:

I feel a bit like the panel of judges on American Idol. I can see the potential, but the implementations are all a bit karaoke. They all peaked early and haven’t really given us a recent moment. The first credible vendor that changes the dialog from search to information that finds me — and then delivers — will be my American Idol, even if they hail from England, China, Israel, or Brazil.

Okay, let’s back up.

First, the type of search discussed in the Internet Revolution write up is not “behind the firewall search”. The author is throwing around a phrase without defining it so I know what’s what. Second, the introduction of eCommerce search is another false start. Finally, the shift to the need for information to find a user is a good point, and it is a subset of search.

Three observations:

1. The reason there is so much confusion about search is due to messy, careless writing. Defining terms is a pretty useful exercise when a common phrase has many possible meanings. I don’t think vendors of enterprise search are ignoring real needs. The Exalead search enabled application is a good example and just one from many I could identify.
2. eCommerce search is a work in progress. A range of methods are in use to make it possible to connect a buyer and a seller. Amazon’s approach is one method; eBay’s is another. Google’s is a third path. None work particularly well, and each company is trying to improve. But eCommerce search has specific requirements and these are different from the requirements for locating information in a customer support system or from a mobile device when one is lost in Lexington, Kentucky.
3. The idea that end users want search to be easy was true in the 1970s and it is true in the 2010s. The problem is that search is a difficult problem. The companies are doing their best within the limits of their resources. Even companies with abundant resources like Google and Microsoft are quick to point out that search is a work in progress.

My recommendation is that anyone writing about search step back and ask, “Have I defined my terms?” and “Have I provided actionable information?” If the answer to these questions, is “Gee, I don’t know”, then save the parental approach for your children. I ignored “shoulds” when I was 12 and I still ignore them today.

Stephen E Arnold, March 28, 2010

No one paid me to write this commentary. I will report non payment to the Bureau of Prisons where “should” is not an operative work. Hey, some prisoners get paid for their work too.

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