Hitwise Says Search Frustrate Users
March 29, 2009
Hitwise is a Web consultancy. Web consultancies with analytics get a double boost. Hitwise has big ideas and data to make most assertions have the ring of truth. These were the thoughts that went through my goosely brain when I read Australian IT’s “Searches Frustrate Surfers” here.
The main point of this article was:
According to Mr Tancer {Hitwise executive], people were using more and more words in their search queries because they were dissatisfied with the results. He said one of the problems facing search engines was the amount of content that did not have a link pointing to it — the method Google and others use to find and rank sites.
I agree. Search is difficult, complicated, and deeply dissatisfying. The issue is, “What’s the fix?” The GOOG is on the search without search track. Microsoft is investing in a down economy. Yahoo is a beached whale. We know the problem. Any suggestions from the consulting or data side of the Hitwise house?
I don’t have too many problems with search, so the addled goose is not a good judge of such matters derived from statistical estimates of traffic. On system accounts for about two thirds or more of search traffic, so it must be doing something semi-right in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Google in the US Government
March 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to the Google Blogoscoped article “Google Code Enters WhiteHouse.gov” here. No surprise, however. A view source shows that the Google Moderator app is humming away. The question is, “How quickly will Google displace other vendors’ systems?” In my opinion, this is not an “if” question. It is a “when” question.
Stephen Arnold, March 31, 2009
More Online Advertising Deep, Deep Thinking
March 29, 2009
TechCrunch has a “steel cage match” underway. A Wharton professor found himself in the spotlight with some amazingly naive assertions about making money online. Today I read “Steel Cage Debate on the Future of Online Advertising: Danny Sullivan Vs. Eric Clemons” here. In my opinion, the steel cage metaphor is in itself a good way to generate traffic in order to add some steroids to the TechCrunch advertising biceps brachii.
Advertising thrives on traffic in the way muscle tissue responds to steroids.
I want to do my part in fanning the flames of this intellectual Bessemer furnace. If you are not familiar with the Bessemer method, you will want to refresh your memory about the function of draughts of air blown through coal here. The Bessemer process was abandoned in the 1950s, which provides some color for my comparison.
The spectacular but remarkably wasteful Bessemer process produced some productivity gains, but by the 1950s better methods were found. Online advertising cage matches share some similarities in their inefficient production of heat and sparks.
Here’s this week’s cage match synopsis:
Search engine marketing wizard Sullivan: Advertising will be big on the Internet.
Ivory tower behemoth Clemons: I agree but trust is a big deal. Internet advertising will account for about 20 percent of online revenues in five years.
Let’s step back.
What’s going on is a shift in proportionate spending. The revenue revolution was the Idea Lab notion that people with Web sites would pay for traffic. The big idea here is that a person would spend money to get clicks. The model is not revolutionary. Paying for traffic was a consequence of a property of electronic information; namely, magnetic centers exist which attract the majority of users. Internet traffic is not distributed evenly or randomly. To get in the flow costs money.
Yidio Update
March 29, 2009
Quite a few readers have shown interest in Yidio, the video search system I wrote about here. A reader sent me a link to this interesting post on Quantcast. The site has shown strong traffic growth in the first two months of 2009. You can view the data here. What’s interesting is that the viewers of Yidio don’t favor YouTube.com, if the Quantcast data are accurate. Frankly I had not heard of most of the sites in the “Audience Also Visits” listing; for example, tvduck.com, although the name appeals greatly to this addled goose. TVDuck seemed to be quite YouTube.com centric which begged the question, “How dependent on YouTube.com are these services.
A happy quack to the reader who pointed out that I did not mention that a videographer can make money by posting the content to Yidio. The procedure requires that the videographer provide his / her AdSense identification code. Click here for details.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
For the Millions of Cloud Computing Ontology Lovers
March 29, 2009
I love ontologies, particularly those created for some of the one day seminars that are available. I love cloud computing analyses, particularly those created by the azure chip consultants who would not walk past, let alone paddle, in the addled goose’s pond. I loved the write up by Kevin Jackson in CloudComputing.com’s “A Tactical Cloud Computing Ontology.” You must read the article here. Mr. Jackson tackled the job of taming two of the most widely used buzzwords at information technology conferences today–cloud computing and ontology.
He presents several diagrams that put the cloud computing idea into a framework. the diagrams are useful, but they do contain some terms that I am not exactly sure how to define. Nevertheless, the distance between cloud computing and its ontology is narrowed. He outlined three actions and considerations the reader may wish to consider. I can’t quote this complete sequence, but I can identify broadly the ideas:
- Merge the cloud and on premises experience so the user doesn’t see much of change
- There will be some differences when using the proposed framework
- Something I don’t fully understand well enough to summarize: “As a way to organize an enterprise’s body of knowledge (architecture) about its activities (processes), people, and things within a defined context and current/future environment.
I am still thinking about how this framework applies to search across secure and open content sources in a regulated environment with known network bottlenecks. My hunch is that others will be thinking about these issues before embarking on a composite architecture. No harm from thinking either.
Stephen Arnold, March 28, 2009
Simploos Search
March 29, 2009
I learned about a new search system the other day. I don’t have too much data, but I wanted to mention it to my two or three readers. No point in sitting on what may be the first Chrome-centric rendering engine I have come across. The company offering the new service is Simploos.com here. If you get an error message, just click on continue. The system should work. We think this is a Flash related issue, but I haven’t heard back from the company yet. The figure below shows the interface for a query on my favorite subject, “Beyond Search”.
© Simploos 2009
My files suggest that the thumb nail preview was a feature introduced by the company Girafa. I wrote about it in my original Technology from Harrod’s Creek column for Information World Review in the 1998-1999 time frame. Girafa is still around, and you can see what the company is now doing by clicking here.
You see the thumbnails of the top hits from either a Google or Yahoo search. When you click on a thumbnail, the system displays the splash page of the site. The first hit on Googzilla for the phrase “beyond search” is this Web log. You can set various options and use either Google or Yahoo search results.
Our working hypothesis is that the Google-centric implementation uses Chrome under the covers. Yahoo appears to be using Yahoo’s technology.
The young goslings found the approach fresh and interesting. The older goslings found the screen refresh during scrolling somewhat distracting. For some types of queries, the graphic approach is useful. You can limit the results to those in Spanish which is a nice touch. There’s an advanced search section which is interesting to use as well. Give it a test drive and keep in mind that this implementation is a beta. We’ve noticed minor changes as we used the system over a span of three days. The addled goose emits a gentle, happy quack. A big honk to the person who alerted us to this system as well.
Stephen Arnold,
Learning from the Cloud Manifesto
March 29, 2009
I ignored the cloud manifesto, pointing out that secrecy is useful. Obviously the document was not intended to be kept under wraps, so a mini-microblogging storm raged. CNet’s The Wisdom of Crowds ran James Urqhart’s article “Cloud Computing: What We Learned from Manifestogate”. You can read this write up here. The article includes links, an itemized list of the four ways to perceive the cloud manifesto, and a conclusion that strikes a positive note: “open is good.”
In my experience, the clouds owned and operated by commercial enterprises will behave the same way opposing forces have behaved since stone age tribes split into factions and promptly embarked on chatter and warfare. The crazy idea that the cloud operating environments will behave in a way different from other technology battles is off base and not in line with what is now going on among the Apple, Microsoft, and Google camps in mobile services. I am omitting the other players because I don’t want to trot out too many examples, which are legion.
Amazon’s cloud may communicate under circumstances determined by the world’s smartest man who is now working as an order fulfillment clerk about 45 minutes from where I am writing this post. Google will play ball as long as those folks follow the Google rules. Microsoft is going to do what Microsoft has done since its inception and make an effort to enforce its agenda.
Each of these companies will yap about open standards. Each of these companies will put their pet open source wizards on display. Each of these companies will attempt to capture as much of the market as users, competitors and regulators allow.
At some point in the future, the agendas will shift from the cloud to the next big thing. At that point, a big dog will be in the yard and the other dogs will cooperate or get their necks broken. I appreciate Mr. Urqhart’s view. I think we’re in line for a good old fashioned standards battle. Forget cannon fodder. Think column fodder. CNet will be in seventh heaven.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Online Economics, Ads, and Crash Landings
March 29, 2009
A number of articles have been sent to us here in the mind drainage choked goose pond in the last couple of weeks on the subject of monetizing electronic information. Our official view is that getting cash for online content requires a rethink of the available business models. The pay by the drink approach and the subscription approach don’t work very well in our experience. You can make these work if you have high value, scarce, hard to get information. Other types of information don’t have magnetic appeal so the connection between the user’s credit card and the vendor’s bank account doesn’t stick.
For a case example of how this fails as a business model, you may want to read and save Joseph Tartakoff’s “Tracking The Online-Only Seattle P-I: Traffic Down 20 Percent” here. What struck me was that without the hard copy paper acting as a sales flier, users are not going to the dead tree outfit’s online only service. Without traffic, online advertising becomes less attractive. Over time, the Seattle Post Intelligencer will realize that its online play won’t pay the bills. Without the cash to create the hard copy version, the marketing of the Web site becomes job one. The problem is that marketing is expensive. Ergo: the business models in use at this moment can be tracked casually by anyone with a yen to read news about the Seattle P-I revenue adventure.
I don’t want to quack harshly, but the glib words about online revenue underscore the lack of understanding about how online economics work in the real world. Google borrowed a useful model and now provides an example–or as the entitlement crowd of azure chip consultants likes to say–or a use case. Whatever lingo you prefer is fine, but the fact is that declining traffic means that ad and subscription models are not likely to pull this site out of a steep nose dive. Fasten your seat belts.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Gun Shots and Knives: Wizard Suggests the Google Is Dangerous
March 28, 2009
As an addled goose, I ask quite a few questions about the articles I read. I try to be frisky, or as frisky as a fat, dumb, half deaf, poor sighted addled goose can be. I let out a bewildered honk when I read “How Google Shot Microsoft after It Took a Knight to a Gunfight” here. The headline interested me. I noticed the “it”, and I was not sure which antecedent applied. Next I remarked on the use of words routinely filtered by some of my more interesting customers; specifically, “knife” and “gun fight”. Needless to say, I paddled over to the article and dipped my beak.
The story pivots around the behavior of Google and its softened nemesis Microsoft. A Microsoft executive pointed out that the GOOG, as it ages, loses some agility. I too have remarked on the Google’s somewhat tame response to Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. I am not Microsoft, so Google’s sleek and savvy wizards ignore me the way I overlook plastic bottles floating in this addled goose’s mine drainage filled pond.
The Google did notice Microsoft’s jab. And Googzilla roared. The article summarizes what the GOOG did and offered other examples of what was described as poking
at Google with a stick, and in short order, Google took a baseball bat to Microsoft’s head. But as I keep saying, this is a search war that Microsoft is involved with. It’s deadly serious. If Ballmer it going to talk about “advantages” he thinks his company has over Google in search, he needs to be damn sure they really are advantages. Otherwise, he can expect to have more cans of whoopass opened up on him by Google.
I find this quite exciting. Several reasons:
- A live and ambient pundit is documenting Google’s approach to public relations
- The metaphors used to describe the interaction of Google and Microsoft are escalating to images that suggest life and death
- The article makes it clear that those engaged in other aspects of search and content processing now recognize that the world has changed.
Knives, gun shots, and life and deadly serious are terms to notice. I am delighted that the behavior which I thought I had documented in my 2003 to 2005 work is this day news. Not Twitter speed but good enough for the newer version of the Hatfield and the McCoys of search.
Stephen Arnold, March 28, 2009
Library of Congress Makes Citizens as Fish Splash
March 28, 2009
For me, the Library of Congress is more of a museum than a research facility. Even Google looks like a limping dog when compared to the zippy content flashing across the Twitter spam machine. The Library of Congress, according to TechWhack here, is going to put some of its info on YouTube.com and Apple iTunes. Okay. But the best part of the TechWhack write up was this statement, a true classic in my opinion:
Matt Raymond, the library’s director of communications spoke about the new developments: “Our broad strategy is to ‘fish where the fish are,’ and to use the sites that give our content added value — in the case of iTunes, ubiquity, portability, etc.”.
I do like that citizens, users, customers, whatever as “fish”. Good stuff.
Stephen Arnold, March 28, 2009
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