Search in Big Communication Trouble
June 6, 2010
We developed a test platform which is a demo. The idea was to create a publicly accessible service that showed off a hybrid blog and static Web site. We pumped in content for 90 days, slapped on Google AdSense, and figured out how to drop in video. We noticed that the demo site’s pay per click was twice that of the Beyond Search blog. Beyond Search is not a demo; it is a marketing blog updated each day. We use it to flog our services and capture some ideas that are too modest for one of our monographs for for fee columns in Information Today, KMWorld, Information World Review, or the Smart Business Network’s dozen regional business magazines. I am coming to believe that search is difficult to talk about, describe, and research because of what I call “communication trouble.”
No one defines terms about search and content processing. Lots of chatter. No one knows what the heck the person is trying to explain. Discussions of search swing from glittering generalities to mind-numbing explanations of mathematical recipes. In the middle, a maelstrom of confusion. The English language is having a tough time supporting the scaffolding of conversation about finding and using digital information. We need more than a glitzy interface, a laundry list of results, or a single answer generated without context from a mobile device.
What’s up?
Easy. Search – specifically enterprise search – is in big trouble. Here’s a Google Trends chart showing the Google search traffic for the phrase “enterprise search” and “business intelligence”. Don’t see the blue line? There isn’t one. The traffic for enterprise search is modest. If you want to sell something, you may want to use the phrase “business intelligence.”
Now look at “business intelligence” compared to the specialist term “taxonomy”. Wow. Taxonomy is a hot concept. Maybe one of the real experts in taxonomies, controlled term lists, and ontologies will create a Web log to cover this subject. Most of the information I have seen about taxonomies is a bit like a wind up toy. There’s interest but the expertise is certainly not reflected in the information floating around the Web.
Now look at the phrase “real time” versus “knowledge management”.
What do these charts tell me, the addled goose, paddling in the mine run off pond?
If you want to make money with text and content processing, you may want to avoid the phrase “enterprise search”. Not too many people use it. If you run a query for “enterprise search” on Google, you can see some companies paying to pop up against the phrase’s search results. I wonder how efficient these ads are. What’s interesting is to look at the companies populating the right hand column of a Google results list:
Google is advertising itself. The number two spot is a company founded by some former Fast Search & Transfer wizards. Then there is Endeca, one of the leaders in search and e commerce, and a reseller of the Microsoft Fast search technology.
What’s interesting to me is that Attivio and the Fast ESP technology have some DNA in the original Fast Search & Transfer technology which dates from about 1997. Endeca opened its doors in 1999. Google, in case you don’t recall, began life as BackRub in the 1996-1997 slot and then became a “real” company in 1998.
So I hypothesize:
- Tired terminology does not generate Google search traffic.
- The companies clinging to these tired marketing phrases are buying ads to get customers
- The newer technology buzzwords mean content processing but wrapped in jargon or business school baloney.
No wonder the former reporters specializing in night court, unemployed information mavens, and neatly coiffed public relations poobahs are struggling to find a way to talk about content processing. The every day word “search” has no magnetism. Creativity is required.
Take a look at the marketing collateral for Ontology System, based in the UK. The company has a great url, www.ontology.com. Here’s a sampling of their marketing phrases for the company’s consulting and content transformation products and services:
- Data misalignment
- End to end data alignment
- Ontologies and semantics
- Service inventory
- Convergent enterprise services
- Revenue leakage
- Live alignment of cross networking topology.
Now that’s a fresh way of writing about content processing. Is the new lingo working. Here’s a Google Trends report for the phrase “data alignment” compared to “business intelligence”:
So far “data alignment” is not a popular way to look for content processing vendors, technology, or services.
Houston, we have a language problem. Selling search is tough when the obvious words and phrases are devalued. The new coinages are an issue because no one uses them when looking for information on Google.
Search is in crisis because there is a challenge explaining what search is, how its component parts related to business problems, and neologisms work for a handful of insiders. I wish I had a solution to the challenge of explaining search. Google’s approach may be the right one. Borrowing from Nike’s marketing method, “Just do it.” One can ask for forgiveness.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2010
Freebie.
Comments
4 Responses to “Search in Big Communication Trouble”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
[…] more from the original source: Search in Big Communication Trouble : Beyond Search « Marketing and Communication […]
Arnold, perhaps, this is a bit of a typo error? “Then there is Endeca, one of the leaders in search and e commerce, and a reseller of the Microsoft Fast search technology.” How is Endeca a “reseller” of Microsoft FAST technology, when they are considered one of their top competitors?
[…] while sitting in a comfy chair and catching up on my blogs I came across a phrase in a Beyond Search post that […]
Ah, good catch. My error. Endeca does not resell Microsoft Fast.
Thank you,
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2010