What I want from Search: Content that’s meaningful to me
Posted by Joseph Thornley on December 14th, 2009
An assertion by Ravit Lichtenburg in a post on ReadWriteWeb caught my eye. “The issue Google solved so magically — content find-ability — will become all but moot in the coming years. Instead, content relevance and quality will become the key focus.”
Web Search has transformed my life. Thanks to Google, I can find content about virtually anything. I search for topics, addresses, words, people, companies. Online search is my first reference for everything.
Still, Search continues to be a blunt instrument. All too often I find myself clicking through search results to find content that is meaningful to me. What’s relevant to the vast majority of people may not be what I’m looking for.
And that’s where social media comes in. Through social media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook – I find and follow people whose interests intersect with mine and whose perspective I find interesting.
I’m a communicator who cares about community, communication, business, PR and marketing. And I’m Canadian. So, over time I’ve assembled lists of RSS feeds, Twitter IDs and Facebook friends that speak to these interests and place. And very often, I find myself clicking on links and reading content recommended to me by the people I follow.
Does this mean that I live in a bubble of me-too thinkers? Not at all. I don’t subscribe to people because they agree with me. I subscribe to people because they say something that provokes me to think further about a topic or opens a new perspective on it. This leads me to new things as well as new perspectives on familiar issues.
What am I looking for? Search results that are relevant to me and reflect a higher quality of thought.
What I want is a tool that brings all three together for me. And that will do the same for you. And for everyone. To do this, it will need to recognize each of us as an individual and take into account not just what we search for but also what we’ve linked to, what we’ve commented on and what we’ve said.
Is someone out there working on this now? When, I wonder, will I see a tool that will do this?
December 14th, 2009 » 9:36 am
From where I stand, the focus of Google has always been content relevance and quality. In the absence of Social Media, this meant evaluating web pages for content relevance and then evaluating the importance of these pages by assessing links. Social media has broadened the approach. By enriching the linking environment with context and personal networks, search results will only become better over time.
And yes, I would be amazed if Google employees weren’t already working on the tool that you envision. Given that Google’s value is entirely dependent on providing searchers with relevant, high quality content, not doing so would be foolish.
Chris
December 14th, 2009 » 3:35 pm
Yes, Google is indeed working on it…
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-google-social-search-i.html
Google already does this to some extent if you install the Google Toolbar and allow your usage data to be shared with Google. They (Google) claim that they’re analyzing your general web behaviour to personalize results, though I doubt this includes your social media behaviours specifically at this point (outside of Google properties anyway).
Social search has been a hot topic for years, but it never seems to catch on (a number of social search startups have come and gone). My belief is that this is because, as you pointed out, just because you know someone doesn’t mean that you consider the same things to be relevant. I believe that it’s also because “sifting through long lists of results” just doesn’t happen that often. 95% of the time, people find what they’re looking for among the top 5 results…
December 15th, 2009 » 7:13 pm
Thanks for the comments Chris and Nick.
I’m enthusiastic about Google’s moves. But they haven’t yet met the test of usability. They still feel like disjointed experiments.
But I do think that they’re on the right track. I hope they and others will keep innovating until they develop something intuitive and natural.
December 16th, 2009 » 8:02 am
[...] lies in the potential for social connections to contextualize and prioritize our search results. Joe Thornley wrote an interesting post the other day suggesting exactly that – that “search [...]
December 16th, 2009 » 12:18 pm
Twitter Comment
I completely agree. RT @davefleet: Thoughts on “McDonald’s content” and social search: [link to post]
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December 16th, 2009 » 12:22 pm
A contrary argument is that content will simply emerge as more streamlined (shorter in length) and perhaps more opinion-driven (op-ed) versus long-winded, heavily-exhausted articles – this is not necessarily a bad thing, and would in fact be consistent with attention-span trends.
Does the age old argument that good content will always, ALWAYS survive no longer apply? Certainly that is a commonly held treatise among those operating in the social media world.
If we are to assume that content is simply doomed, we’re caving to a potentially misplaced wolf cry about the devolution of knowledge, art, classics, literature, and human engagement in general. I do not believe the situation is this severe. Adaptation has perennially been the name of the game – today, online, is no exception.
Good content will find a way to stay just that. And besides, people know McDonald’s when they eat it – if you don’t want the Big Mac, put it down and go find the steak. It’s still out there.
This comment was originally posted on http://davefleet.com/)“>Exploring the intersection of communications, marketing and social media
December 16th, 2009 » 12:25 pm
Ironically, I used the word “treatise” to describe a simply (short), universal understanding. “Concept” would have been a far more accurate word. Mea culpa – quick writing is not often the best.
This comment was originally posted on http://davefleet.com/)“>Exploring the intersection of communications, marketing and social media
December 16th, 2009 » 12:28 pm
Twitter Comment
RT @davefleet: Thoughts on “McDonald’s content” and social search: [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
This comment was originally posted on http://davefleet.com/)“>Exploring the intersection of communications, marketing and social media
December 16th, 2009 » 12:57 pm
I often wonder if it’s a chicken/egg scenario. Do these sites create the content because there’s such a huge demand for it, or do people consume the content because there’s just so much of it.
I hope that there will always be an arena for well thought-out and diligently crafted information, no matter what the source (personal blog or notable news site).
Great post.
This comment was originally posted on http://davefleet.com/)“>Exploring the intersection of communications, marketing and social media
December 16th, 2009 » 3:58 pm
Twitter Comment
McDonalds Content and Social Search | [link to post]
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December 17th, 2009 » 9:42 am
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RT @tweetmeme McDonalds Content and Social Search [link to post]
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This comment was originally posted on Exploring the intersection of communications, marketing and social media