Semantics, AOL, and the HuffPo
February 17, 2011
Take a huff, a deep huff.
A cursory glance at the recent news heralding the odd coupling of The Huffington Post, arguably a prototype for twenty first century journalism, and AOL, a struggling remnant from the early days of the Internet revolution, presumably leaves the observer unimpressed if not perhaps a little concerned with yet another union in an increasingly deep queue of titanic mergers. “AOL Gets Some Semantics With Its Huffington Post Acquisition” sheds some insight into the deal.
In what current chatter has labeled a last and perhaps impotent attempt at salvation for AOL (see their marriage to Time Warner), it appears that this latest venture could yield some unexpected advantages. HuffPo has been attracting record readership. A report from Google Analytics places the number of unique visitors to the six year old site at forty million for the month of January (though there is contention over the figure). Pair that with its growing roster of respected contributors and one can begin to understand the attraction for AOL.
The Huffington Post has employed semantic Web service for some time. Most recently their purchase of Adaptive Semantics, whose JuLiA technology brings with it automated comment moderation, user profiling as well as a variety of newsgathering implements, seems poised to provide the most benefit to AOL properties. The article states, “In a release announcing the deal, which is expected to close in the spring, the firms said that combining AOL’s infrastructure and scale ‘with the Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.’ ”
Compared to the splicing of Comcast and NBC-Universal, a deal that ignited intense debate and the effects of which remain unclear, the fusion of new media and dated internet access seems tame, if not ill-fitting. Admittedly I consistently read the Post, finding it had sidled up behind The New York Times and the BBC’s online manifestations as a source for news. I remain curious if AOL’s dowry amounts to anything of value in the volatile media landscape. The HuffPo, like its co-founder and namesake, seems uninterested in anything that cannot aid in propelling them to the top of the pile. Can AOL hack it? Time will tell.
Sarah Rogers, February 17, 2011
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Search into Politics
February 8, 2011
Here in Harrod’s Creek, we find search technology more interesting that political hoop jumping. Our question, “Has anyone noticed that companies with a foundation in search and content processing seem to be getting involved in politics?” Probably not, judging from the discussions of America Online’s purchase of the Huffington Post blog and information service or of the Google employee embroiled or at least caught in the turmoil in Egypt. You can get information about the AOL deal from “You’ve Got Arianna” and about the Googler-Egypt story from “Egyptian PM Says Missing Google Marketing Executive Wael Ghonim to Be Released Tomorrow.”
We don’t know if these two events are cut from the same bolt of fustian or completely unrelated events. If these are related, have search and content processing companies shifted from serving the needs of customers to a larger stage? And if on a larger stage, is the object generating value for stakeholders or some other goal; for example, implementing a “vision” of how the world should work.
If the events are unrelated, then the question becomes, “What next?” Will other companies knowingly or unknowingly allow employees to pursue political agendas under the colors of the corporation?
We liked the good old days when companies created products and met the needs of customers. The merging of technology and politics may be as complex a mixture as religion and politics. We have nothing against giving individuals and corporations some scope of operation. But when the actions play out on a global stage, we wonder if technology has worked its way into society in a new way.
What are the consequences of breaking a nation’s embargo against certain types of information? What are the consequences of using content as a weapon? What are the consequences of co-mingling corporate and personal goals with an online service? Is this stuff content, marketing, or something else entirely?
We don’t know. Fascinating for certain. And far from the mundane work in Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, February 8, 2011
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SEO Baloney Stripped of Its Plastic Wrap
January 27, 2011
Navigate to “4 Reasons Why SEO Is Underfunded.” The audience is a marketing person, a Web master, or an SEO expert. The message is that search engine optimization could get more money if certain things were different. The write up points out that those buying SEO or funding SEO want results. No kidding. In addition, the people with cash want silver bullets. Making matters worse is the word smithing that goes on to explain the methods to get a better PageRank. Since Google does not reveal its methods in particularly useful detail, the chatter and jargon cover up the fact that outsiders are often clueless. And, the article suggests, is that some folks in need of traffic don’t dig the value of “organic traffic.”
When I read this write up, I drew several hypotheses:
- SEO is mostly on point, original content with appropriate word use. Lacking the base of high value or magnetic content, traffic for most Web sites is going to suck. Don’t believe me. Navigate to Compete.com, get a free account, and look at the reported site traffic of Coveo.com or BA-Insight.com versus a gasper like Yahoo.com. What do you see? Lousy traffic and zero traffic. Why? Nothing pulls the traffic and no amount of SEO puffery will change the traffic for these successful companies’ Web sites.
- A Web site is no longer a high tech adventure. A Web site is the potential Sir Gawain for the organization. Traditional marketing is disappointing in today’s market. The answer? The Web. Now the fast talkers who pushed content free, brochureware Web sites are at risk. Termination? Litigation? Whatever. Organizations need Web sites to perform, and, believe me, that’s tough to do with some SEO “sauces.”
- Long term value! Give me a break. I can name a dozen companies within a five minute drive of the goose pond that could go out of business next week. The local bank is not going to pump dough into an outfit unless it doers not need the money. You can’t talk long term to an organization unable to meet payroll and pay the utility bills.
It is time to focus on SEO as a set of practices that complement broader marketing goals. SEO won’t generate sales. Even the magic of Groupon.com or LivingSocial.com works in certain use cases. Telling 20 million people that ArnoldIT.com can do a $100,000 chunk of work. Think that will sell in Farmington, Illinois?
I loved the source write up. It strips bare the weaknesses of selling a tool that can do only part of the marketing job needed today. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2011
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Amazon, Google, and eBooks: Retail vs Search
January 9, 2011
I read “3 Ways Google Can Succeed in E-Books.” Interesting. I sat on the write up and my initial ideas until I had more information from the Consumer Electronics Show. CES was, I hoped, going to provide me concrete information about Android-based tablets. Well, there were tablets. My hunch is that the success of the Android tablet may have something to do with the success of Google’s e-book initiative.
Based on our research into Google’s machinations disclosed in open sources, we think Google may have a steep hill to climb. Think of a 12 year old slogging up Mt. Kilimanjaro. The “climb” is a walk, and if you are not in reasonable shape, you will not make it to the summit with your collected works of Ernest Hemmingway.
First, the notion that Google must win over, cater to, or somehow leverage independent bookstores is a great idea—just one of those anachronisms like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Bookstores are in deep doo doo, and I am not sure how one wins over, caters to, or leverages the moribund. Not far from Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, we have one independent bookstore. The goslings and I shop there in order to help the shop out. I see more knick nacks which is a sign post saying, “The margins for books suck. Buy an expensive book light.” Good luck to any analyst who wants to build a hedge fund on book stores.
Second, Google has lots of hardware partners. The challenge is to find a way to get those folks to behave like fire ants on the way to a meal. With Andoid 2.3 available as open source, the hardware folks may say, “Thanks. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Think forks, fragmentation, and proprietary behavior. Maybe not today, but I see these clouds on the horizon. Amazon and Sony have at this time been aced by Apple in the hardware department, and Google has to find a way to deal with the reality of consumer electronics that generates substantive revenues. I suppose Google can start reporting in Amazon fuzzy units. Victory is for Google indeed possible, but online behaves in mysterious ways. Cheaper definitely does not work. Better maybe if style and cachet are the key factors. Faster. Faster may be out of the hands of the Google. Faster has been a mantra for a while, and, frankly, I don’t think I know what faster means. Some of Google’s nifty new services seem sluggish to us.
Third, online commerce was supposed to be a slam dunk for Froogle, now, Google Shopping. I use Checkout, but only after I check to see if Amazon has a better offer. The dust up over Google’s app stores and their functionality may be over, but there are some payment methods in place that work reasonably well and some of the payment schemes workwell and have a strong position; examples include Amazon, Apple, and the on again off again PayPal. Can Google become the go-to payment system? The go to shopping system for mobile users? The go to price look up system? The go to deal system for the Groupon crazed crowd? Lots of opportunities. How many have slipped away from the ageing GOOG.
Fourth, Google is late to the party. Now I know that The Art of War talks about sitting back and striking when the enemy is listening to iPod music after dinner around the apple wood camp fire. What better time to show up and slaughter the winners? Our interpretation of our research data suggests that Google is no longer very good in the 100 yard dash. Heck, when it comes to social media, Google is challenged getting up the front stairs to Frye’s in Palo Alto. I hear the heavy breathing and the chuckles from the Xooglers at Facebook. Google is 12 and slowing down. Examples of Google’s agility are welcome. Plug them into the comments form on this blog. Maybe Google’s new entrepreneurial organizational set up will toss faerie dust around? We hope so.
Fifth, lock in and habitual behavior are challenges for Google and its partners. Once habits are formed in online, those bowling ball gutters are tough to change. Google’s dominance in search is one example. Other examples include Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon in eBooks. Google can change habits by 10 step programs and rehab.
The question is, “Can Google take the right actions at the right time?”This question has greater urgency now because Amazon has opened its own Android store. I wonder if Mr. Bezos wants to be positioned to deal with this retail opportunity than a search-and-advertising specialist.
Stephen E Arnold, January 9, 2010
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Is Google Chasing Dessert and Ignoring the Main Course?
January 7, 2011
We love the Google in Harrod’s Creek? The Street View picture of our office is now a bush. Our listing is in “review” and has been for months. The goose finds these actions amusing.
“Google’s Decreasingly Useful, Spam-Filled Web Search” keeps an earlier write up’s points alive despite the gingerbread. (You can read the source of the Marco.org information at this link.) Among the points, the subject of “spam” is the most interesting in our opinion.
One person’s spam may be another person’s dinner on a cruise ship. Our view is that a Google query is a useful adjunct to other research actions.
Is Google increasingly becoming an outsider for certain types of online research?
For example, yesterday we had to dig up quickly some information from our Overflight archive about a “relaxed SQL” search vendor. Here’s what we did to locate the items of information:
First, we ran the general query on Exalead’s search at www.exalead.com/search. This index is not distorted by advertisements and has more than 10 billion pages in its index. We also use the Exalead engine for Overflight. We then did the query on Blekko.com (www.blekko.com) and plucked specific results before navigating to Web sites. Yep, old fashioned pre-retrieval vetting. Still works at ArnoldIT.
Second, we ran queries for the company’s founder, who is in indexes under several spelling variants. We think spelling variants are quite interesting, particularly when the vendor is involved in licensing technology to what seem to be “dating” or “meeting people” services. The systems we used were:
- Cluuz.com at www.cluuz.com. This appears to be a Yahoo BOSS service implemented on content in the Bing.com/Yahoo.com index
- The Google News Archive at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, using the advanced search functions to get the string variants
- Icerocket at http://www.icerocket.com/
- Collecta at http://www.collecta.com
Third, we did our patent searching using my favorite site, the USPTO at www.uspto.gov.
Notice that we did not use the general Google Web index. There were four reasons:
- Relevancy, unless the advanced search features are used for the query, is focused on the person looking for Lady Gaga, not “relaxed SQL”
- The date of documents is important to us and we find that figuring out the date of an item and the freshness of the Google index a bit of a challenge and frankly not worth the effort
- The automatic truncation and spelling correction functions override what’s stipulated in certain situations. When looking for proper name variants, I don’t want automatic anything. I want to see what I typed in the search query string
- The 32 billion Web pages, the ads, and the other stuff jammed into a Google results display are mental clutter for me. I now avoid trying to figure out what’s what by using other services.
How did we do? We learned from the outfit asking us to perform the research that we surfaced information that directly supported what the company developing “relaxed SQL” was saying in briefings.
Mission accomplished using Google as one component in a secondary process. That’s quite a change from our original dependence on Google in 2002.
My hunch is that Google is nearly perfect and the change in our Web search method is a result of mental degradation here in Harrod’s Creek. If you are dependent on Google, good for you.
Stephen E Arnold, January 7, 2011
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Google and Telling vs Google and Doing
December 22, 2010
I am 3,000 miles from Kentucky. From this vantage point, explanations about Google look different. I noted that the FCC thinks Android has a part to play in net neutrality. Okay, sounds good in Washington, DC and among the azure chip consultants, I suppose. Looks silly from here. Then I read “Google’s Big Problem: It Ain’t What You Think” and noted this passage:
Google is like an old dog trying to learn new tricks. The good news is that Google isn’t that old, and more importantly, the company knows it has a problem and is trying to find ways to fix it.  Rubin isn’t the only Google executive who has been vocal about building better user experiences. David Girouard, who heads up Google’s cloud efforts, told me the company is working on building better user experiences for their apps as well as other Google offerings.
The goose likes “ain’t”. Very Kentucky. However, the point is that Google wizards talking is not the same as doing. What Google does speaks volumes. What Google says is pretty much like those hot dogs that the Illinois State Fair once permitted. You knew what a hot dog looked like. You did not know exactly what was inside. Google has flummoxed the poobahs, the SEO crowd, and a number of other folks. These actions cannot change three points that I have noted:
First, as we enter 2011, Facebook has momentum. Google is in scramble mode.
Second, Google’s new products such as the Google TV are not ready for prime time, and in that gap between talk and doing,there may be some opportunities for companies like Netflix and its new pal Amazon plus some other folks.
Third, Google has managed to get itself into an interesting game of 3D chess. In addition to battles with legal pawns worldwide, Google has to cope with a frisky Steve Jobs, a blood sniffing Microsoft, and a group of enterprise software companies that includes IBM and Oracle who seem less than ambivalent about protecting their existing revenue streams.
So how is user experience going to blunt these points? If you know the answer, snap up some Google shares and bet on the Math Club. Your broker may be working today. I won’t be calling my crazed 30 year old wheeler dealer, however.
Stephen E Arnold, December 22, 2010
iPad vs. Print Media: iPad’s Unintended Consequences
December 22, 2010
I saw this coming, did you? Network World has a “Survey: iPad news-reading eating away at print media.” It’s not a surprise that iPad users are canceling their printed newspaper subscriptions, in favor of low-cost apps. A survey taken of 1600 middle-aged, educated men showed that they use their iPads to read about current events.
“Here’s where print media gets the bad news, if you’ll pardon the expression: 58 percent of respondents who subscribe to print newspapers and spend more than an hour a day reading news on their iPad said they were very likely to cancel those print subscriptions in the next six months. In fact, around 10 percent of respondents reported they had already canceled printed newspaper subscriptions.”
Older readers are the ones maintaining their printed subscriptions, but no one can deny that digital media is faster and cheaper. Newspapers aren’t going to disappear anytime soon, but it’s kind of like what’s happening with DVDs and Blue Ray discs. Some formats get obsolete.
Whitney Grace, December 22, 2010
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How Americans Spend Their Time
December 18, 2010
Slurp, slurp. ”
That is the sound of “real journalists” gobbling the latest Forrester confection. I read “Forrester: Americans Spend Equal time Online and Watching TV.” Great headline, but I am not sure I know what “time” means. Also, the pairing of online and watching TV is ambiguous.
I get the point. Web activity is now as popular as watching the boob tube. Great.
But what happens to the data if a person watches TV when online?
I think I know what the mid tier outfit is trying to accomplish: make sales for its consulting business. The “data” are the bait for the canny Forrester fishermen and fisherwomen.
Here’s the main idea. People are spending as much time watching TV as the people are fiddling with their computers, which I think means devices that are computers just hauled around or tucked in a pocket.
Several observations:
- What’s the sample size? What was the sampling method? Is the n=xxx such a big deal? Omit that from the stats homework in the lousy liberal college I attended as a dull normal and the prof awarded an automatic F. Guess that doesn’t apply to mid tier consulting outfits.
- Online usage is growing. Okay, great to know since devices have been proliferating for several years. It makes sense that if there are more devices, usage would go up.
- TV sucks. Well, the write up did not document that, but the TV crowd, like the newspaper and other publishers, are in a tizzy as people use their laptops and gizmos like the Apple TV to get the programming each user wants. With control, TV sucks less. If you want only shows you love, TV does not suck at all.
- The features used by those online mirror the same Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville “average” that his travels in America documented. The only difference is that the stuff that pleases is pretty well know; for example, email, buying stuff, and socializing.
What’s not in the write up may be in the “real” study available from Forrester? Facebook. My hunch is that the demographics of a statistically-valid sample rigorously surveyed would reveal some nuances not in the article and maybe in the “real” study. Here’s a list:
- In each demographic, which activity is growing more rapidly, which is decreasing more rapidly?
- In the demographic with the heaviest TV usage, what’s the group doing? Using the TV as background, a way to feel loved, or as a primary activity?
- In the demographic with the heaviest online usage, what amount of time is spent on Facebook versus any other social system.
- Across the sample, what is the lean back versus lean forward behavior? How many in each sector use one mode as a primary and the other mode as a secondary?
- Across demographics, who does the most buying? Under what conditions?
Our work in this field suggests some surprising behavioral shifts. The multitasking characteristic is covered in a Forrester blog post. Presumably that activity is documented rigorously in the “real” report.
But what about that sample? What confidence should I have in the oh-so-precise data? Without data about the mechanics of the study, not much I fear.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2010
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Information Does Leak
December 10, 2010
In spite of repeated attempts in the last few days to shut Wikileaks down, the bane of the establishment’s existence presses on. Forced to relocate its Web address to a Swiss site, wikileaks.ch, after its original host, Amazon.com, abandoned it, Wikileaks has found refuge in hundreds of mirror sites, other Web sites that duplicate its content and make removal of the information from the Internet nearly impossible.
At last count, Wikileaks was mirrored on 1368 sites.
As documented by several news services, including the BBC, on Monday, founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police onsexual-assault charges. In both cases, the women acknowledge that sex with Assange was consensual, but they claim at some point, it became nonconsensual.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the anti-Wikileaks rhetoric has amped itself up several notches. The Hill quoted former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as saying, “Information warfare is warfare, and Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant.”
As CNN reported, one “statesman” even went so far as to call for his execution.
The standard buzz-phrase defenses are also being trotted out, aptly demonstrated by Sen. Diane Feinstein’s Wall Street Journal op ed, such as “threat to national security” and “placing our troops in harm’s way.”The keen-minded among us should note that these are the same buzz-phrase defenses that have been used to keep the United States mired in at least two wars for the last decade.
Is there evidence that Assange is endangering the United States? Some pundits see powerbrokers are being embarrassed and exposed. How is that a bad thing for the powerless? We understand how it is a bad thing for those in power, however.
After all, as Time Magazine reported, it was the United States government that trumpeted the interagency sharing of intelligence post-911. Naturally, it is the United States government that is appalled when such a wide distribution of “sensitive” information finds its way into the datasphere.
Whatever you may think of the interesting Julian Assange, some see him as doing a service to Americans and to the world by leaking this information. The less we know about our government’s activities, the stronger they become. The more we know, the stronger we become.
No matter how many attempts are made to silence Wikileaks and its supporters or to censor the Web, Assange and those like him are creatures of the Net. It is pervasive in its scope. Thus, Wikileaks or a comparable service will persist.
Can a government bureaucracy control information that leaks to the Internet? We don’t know.
Pete Fernbaugh, December 10, 2010
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Greed Feedback Loops: Web Indexing, SEO, and Content
December 5, 2010
Wow, I thought the teeth gnashing over “objective search results” was a dead issue. Objectivity is not part of the “free” Web search method. Uninformed people accept results as factual, relevant, and worth an invitation to have lunch with Plato. Wrong. Objective search results are a bit of myth and have been for decades.
Some education, gentle reader. A commercial database exercises editorial control. If you ran a query for ESOP on the Dialog system for File 15, you got a list of results in which the controlled term was applied or, if you were a savvy searcher, in documents in which the string ESOP appeared in a field or an abstract/full text field. The only objectivity involved was that Dialog matched on a string. No string. No match.
Online information is rife with subjectivity.
In the commercial database world, the subjectivity comes into play when the database producer selected an article to summarize, the controlled terms to apply, how the searcher framed his or her query, and what file to use in the first place. In ABI/INFORM the content set guaranteed that you would get only articles from magazine and journals we thought were important. The terms were the domain of the editors. The searcher controlled the query. Dialog was passive.
Flash forward to free Web search.
Search is expensive and the money to pay for content processing and the other bits and pieces of the so called “free system.” The most used Web search services get money mostly from advertising; that is third party payers. The reason advertisers pay money is to get access to Web search users. The present Web search system is largely built to maximize the money that flows to the search service provider. Nothing about the process is objective in my opinion. Unlike Dialog, free Web search meddles with the search results anywhere it can in order to derive benefit for itself. A happy user is not the goal of the system. A happy advertiser is the main focus in my opinion.
In the good old days, there was overt meddling, but was the the user’s query and the database producer’s editorial policy. The timesharing company providing the service selected some databases for its service and excluded others. Users had no control over the timesharing vendor. Dialog and LexisNexis did what was necessary to maximize revenues and control the customer, the database producer, and the revenues.
But even in the good old days most online searchers di=d not worry much about the database producers’ editorial policies. Today almost no one thinks about the provenance of a content object. The Web search service wants clicks and advertisers. The advertiser wants clicks, leads, and sales. The content is not the main concern of the advertiser. Getting traffic is the main concern. And the Webmaster of an individual Web site wants traffic. The user wants information for free. The SEO industry sprang up to help anyone with money spoof the free Web indexes in order to get more traffic for a Web site which had little or no traffic in many cast. These are the ingredients of the feedback loop that has made free Web search the biased service it is. And the feedback loop that almost guarantees a lack of subjectivity.
Now read “When Businesses Attack Their Customers” or one of the dozens of other write ups by English majors, failed programmers, and search engine optimization experts. The notion of a Web search system fiddling the results seems to be a real light bulb moment. Give me a break. Consider these typical functions in Web indexing and posting today:
- Lousy content created to get clicks from the clueless. There’s big money in crap content because of programs like Google AdWords. But those annoying pop up ads, those are just variations on the crap content scheme. Lousy content exists because search engines incentive the creators of this content. Users are unable to think critically about information, preferring to take whatever is dished up as gospel.
- The Web indexes are not in the education business. Web indexes are in the traffic and advertising business, and these outfits will do what’s necessary to get traffic. If the National Railway Retirement Board adds an important document, that document may want a long time before a Web search engine indexes it. Put up a post about Mel Gibson’s court battle, and that document is front and center really fast. Certain content attacks clicks, and that content gets the limelight.
- People who use the Web describe themselves as good researchers. Baloney. Most people look for information the way a Stone Age person made a fire: Wait for a lighting strike, steal or borrow a burning stick from a tribesman, or get two rocks and bash them together. Primitive queries cause Web search systems to deliver what the user wants without the user having to think about source, provenance, accuracy, or freshness. By delivering what users may want, Web search engines create a way to offer advertisers what appears to be a great sales advantage. I think the present approach delivers advertisers meaningless clicks, big bills, and lots of wacky metrics. Sales. Not so much.
I don’t think the commercial online search systems and the commercial database producers have a future filled with exploding revenues and ever higher quality content. I think the feedback loop set up and fed by free Web search is broken. In its wake is the even more subjective and probably easier to manipulate “social search” method. If you don’t know something, just ask a fried. That will work really well on certain topics. The uninformed are now leading the uninformed. Stupid is and as stupid does.
I use the Exalead Web index. No index is perfect, but I am more confident in Exalead’s approach because the company is not into the ad game. I also use DuckDuckGo and Blekko. Neither is perfect, but I have more confidence in the relevancy of the results, but I don’t know the scope of the companies’ indexes, not their respective editorial policies. The other Web indexes are little more than ad engines.
And SEO or search engine optimization? That “discipline” was created to get a Web page to the top of a results list. Never was the SEO motivation precision, recall, or relevancy. Accuracy of the content was not a primary concern. Clicks were it. As SEO “experts” trashed relevancy methods, the Web search engines abandoned objectivity and went for the clicks and money. I don’t have a problem with this, what I have a problem with is the baloney manufactured about bias, lousy search results, and other problems. These problems, in my opinion, complement the the naive and uninformed approach to research most users of Web search systems rely upon.
A failure in some education systems virtually ensures that critical thinking is in danger of becoming extinct. In an iPad mad world with attention deficit disorder professionals running rampant, I suppose the howls of outrage may be news. For me, this is an old story and an indication of the state of Web search.
The feedback loop is up and operating. Irrelevancy will increase in the quest for ad revenue. No easy fix in sight for a problem that’s been around for a decade. Now the Web search providers want to push search results to users before the users search. Gee, that’s a great opportunity to deliver subjectively ordered results based on advertiser needs. The scary part is that many Web users neither know no care about provenance, precision, recall, or relevance.
Welcome to a future with lots of lousy searchers who think they are experts.
Give me a break.
If you know an information professional, sometimes called a librarian, take a moment and get some advice from a real pro about searching. Too much work? Maybe that’s why so many bad decisions are evident today? Bad data, uninformed decisions, a lack of critical thinking, and flawed information skills are nutrients for big and bad mistakes.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2010
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