Yahoo and Search Models
April 30, 2010
I received an email this morning pointing to the strong showing of Google at the recent Web conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. I responded that Yahoo continues to push forward with what seem to me academic-type initiatives. In terms of traffic and revenue growth, I am waiting for some real action to take place.
After writing the email to the person who pinged me about Yahoo, I read “Yahoo’s Search Model Developing a New Face.” Suddenly this morning it is a Yahoo renascence, at least for a few minutes. The SFGate story recycles the conference presentations. The idea in the write up struck me as a variant of publish or perish or publicity or perish.
The passage that caught my attention was:
[The Yahoo report] … found that people only spend about one-sixth of their online time performing searches. That compares with half of their time for browsing and one-third for communicating, according to aggregated data pulled from the Yahoo Toolbar, a downloadable browser feature that provides quick links to a user’s favorite content.
The research shows that people are “doing” things to find information. Yep, that’s search. The problem is that the word “search” is pretty much without meaning in my opinion. The reality is that the yammer about social networks is missing the obvious point; that is, some users prefer to rely on what those in their so-called network tell them, not what an ad choked, power besotted, marketing injected public Web search system tells them.
Search vendors and their research papers are in the ivery tower world. Interesting stuff, but it is not as relevant as traffic and money. Source: http://www.ivorytowerframes.com/3765/IVORYTOWERIMAGE11.jpg
How do I know?
First, look at the sudden shift from Web search to services like Facebook. Even Caterina Fake’s Hunch.com service is about finding information. True, it combines smart software with inputs from humans but it indicates the boundary condition for the phase change that is taking place.
Second, consider the similarity of the Bing – Google – Yahoo tie up. If you run a query on any of these services, the results are pretty much the same. Little wonder that those who live in an information fishbowl are looking for ways to filter the baloney, specious hits, and useless links from the search results. Forget objectivity. Go with subjectivity. – that’s the mantra now.
Third, the social angle works. If you have not tried this simple test, spend two minutes with your iPad and run the query “digital camera” on Delicious.com, StumbleUpon.com, and Facebook.com. Now run the same query on any of the Big Three services. Which results are the ones you want to use to start your search? I go with the social for many topics because the results are more useful to me. Your mileage may differ. But know the vehicles, please.
Fourth, in the real time sector, the implementation of real time search results in the Big Three are not too useful to me. I find the specialized services and even my own Overflight service more capable of giving me the actionable information. I wrote about this in an upcoming KMWorld article, and you can get the details when that issue of the magazine comes out.
Bottomline: academic reports and marketing plays are different from traffic and revenue. The wisdom of crowds is actually better when the crowd is chopped down to those whom you “know” and those whom you don’t. Traditional search systems like Yahoo’s have a long way to go, but its fellow travelers Google and Microsoft have the same journey to make. Facebook has already arrived and without any academic researchy stuff either. 150 million users in 2009. 400 million users in 2010. Speaks loudly to me.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2010
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