A Search for Search That Works
|
Written By Reprise Media | December 23, 2005 | Share This
|
|
Last week Yahoo acquired del.icio.us, the wiki-style social book-marking service for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was very public and widely covered, though speculated and explained only by the most hardened industry insiders. The purchase of del.icio.us is just the latest in a long-time-coming consolidation of user-based applications by the majors, possibly kicked-off with Yahoo!’s high-profile acquisition of Flickr last year.
Yahoo! also recently launched My Web 2.0, which intends to be a user-specific search functionality which includes for page-ranking technology, but more intently adds the shared knowledge from people we trust. And earlier this month Yahoo! created a new platform titled Yahoo! Answers where users get to ask, answer and browse each other’s questions. Because these search results are more based on the aggregation of user-generated content (or folksonomies), the system is more conducive to common language, which is a huge accomodation. Ultimately this is where Yahoo!’s acquisition of Del.icio.us becomes so intriguing and suggestive of a new age of search.
Yahoo!’s definitely got it right if their effort is to redefine web-search, moving away from the algorithmic methods defined by Google. Recognizing its myriad shortcomings, Google has long been diminishing their reliance on Page Rank, a democratized algorithm whereby sites are indexed based on their link structure (mainly inbound) and the value of those sites that vouch for them. Page Rank essentially makes the business of indexing the web one big popularity contest and helps emerging blue-chip and up-and-coming sites snowball far beyond their natural momentum should allow. Additionally, Page Rank has given a tremendous edge to sites like CitySearch, eBay and NexTag, as their various listings clog up the resultant listings. Perhaps the biggest way Page Rank fails is where it neglects the valance of those links and connections. Google will recognize 316,000 inbound links to Amazon.com, but won’t distinguish whether they speak in favor of the products Amazon sells or links that speak against the brand and its corporate policies. Run the query “link:google.com” and you’ll find over 3.7 million trackbacks. I wouldn’t begin to speculate the breakdown between positive coverage, financial coverage, and backlash content.
The best example of how this Page Rank system fails the user so completely is with Google Bombing, the process by which large numbers of sites can influence the search results, in order to reflect personal opinions, values and vendettas. Consider that infamous scenario where a query for “miserable failure” links back to a biography of the President on the official White House website. Another example, type our President’s name into Google and you’ll find the 6th organic link tracks back to a site that juxtaposes photos of Dubya with chimpanzees in similar poses. Whether the ultimate site is dignified for the President or not is irrelevant, what’s critical is how unproductive the instance is to what’s supposed to be a freely democratized, non-partisan informational utility.
Most recently, the private search network Wink launched widespread. Wink pulls web-links from user-powered sites like Slashdot, Digg, Yahoo!’s My Web 2.0 and last but not least, the aforementioned Deli.icio.us. While Wink will backfill their listings with Google and host AdSense as well, these various applications and folksonomies represent the true intent of the engine, and ultimately a shift from the extremely misguided field of algorithmic search exemplified by that Google search for “miserable failure”.
On a broader level, this new “Web 2.0″-titled wave of social networking, social bookmarking and wiki-style folksonomies represents a move towards the more collaborative global community first described in Howard Reingold’s seminal book from 1991 “The Virtual Community”. There, the man known as the “first citizen of the Internet” spoke of true online communities defined and constructed by the participants, with the users as architects to the web. While currently based on the algorithmic contribution, Web 2.0 is spinning out in all sorts of directions, including assets and provisions from social networks, photo-sharing and blogging applications, Wikis, ratings and review contents (Amazon recommends, Gizmodo, Guidester), so on and so forth. Google may always form the basis for search algorithms, but the new guard will create an Internet that more closely reflects the contents we create online, and how those contents mirror our personal interests, values and connections.
Randy Schwartz is Director of Strategic Development at Reprise Media.
Topics: Tagging |
I don’t think Gbombing obscure search terms shows a weakness in G’s armor. If the same tactic was successful in skewing the results on popular search terms, G would have a problem. However, there is enough competition from legitimate sites that have both inbound links and use the relevant terms on their web pages to prevent Gbombing from having much influence.
Ed,
That