Comments on: Vivisimo CEO on Personal Search

By: Brian Turner

Brian Turner — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 21:24:44 +0000

Personalisation?

5 words:

"My TiVo thinks I'm gay"

By: fang5

fang5 — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 03:57:11 +0000

Let’s people personalize the ways they are personalized.

By: Richard Hall

Richard Hall — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 03:28:08 +0000

I disagree with pretty much everything he says. None of the problems he mentions are particularly cumbersome.

It really comes down to expectations. I don't think personalised search is going to make search engines right anywhere near 100% of the time, however the incremental improvements will be worthwhile.

By: Will Gaus

Will Gaus — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:01:41 +0000

I enjoyed reading the article and agree with Raul. Perhaps we don’t need personalization. Rather, lets focus on the masses. I think the value add comes in to play when you can impact my results based on what others using the same and like search terms have been clicking through. No, I don’t want my results manipulated by what the masses are doing, but lets face it the study of sociology indicates that human behavior is easy to predict when you look at the masses. The reason for this is that we in fact are not that much different from those around us. We think we are, sometimes we really think we are, but we aren’t. Where am I going with this? 999 out of 1000 users a likely the same or very similar to the point that a massive database of search activity or ability to track searches beyond the simple query would likely yield relevant results based on what others have searched for and clicked on. Goes back to John’s idea of ‘The Database of Intentions.’ The concept that I think many are afraid to come to terms with is the idea that if I am searching for something, someone has likely already done the same.

By: gary price

gary price — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:20:14 +0000

Another excellent paper that Raul wrote a few years ago is titled, "Needed: A More Selective Ignorance."
http://www.vivisimo.com/docs/overlook.pdf

Bottom Line:
"A discriminating ignorance is bliss."

I would also agree with the comment about Yahoo Mindset. The technology and concept is perhaps better seen with Yahoo's Smart Sort.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/smartsort/

By: Vijaychandran

Vijaychandran — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:11:40 +0000

HE says correct.

But think is marketing View point. Narioki kanus. Delighters way. Here after people doesnt use or beneffit from the services every once in a while google has to role out some thing. To delight people.

Why cherry coke , Vanilla coke and all. Do you know how many percentage of people drink that. Amazingly low.But just to make people think that they are deligheters . I mean some thing new everytime. We are going to see more of this any way ..

By: Mark Harwood

Mark Harwood — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:29:51 +0000

Great article. I also prefer the approach of adding search criteria explicitly rather than implicitly.
I would much rather deal with an engine like Vivisimo that at least attempted a conversation with me but sometimes made strange suggestions than deal with a "black-box" engine which silently records what it interprets as my preferences and makes little or no attempt to articulate them.

By: Search Engines Web

Search Engines Web — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:04:07 +0000

For the casual surfer the advanced Search Features may be too esoteric, they have just began replacing one and two keyword queries with three and four keywords, many do not even use the local search (they just add the city or state in the keyphrase query)

The Yahoo Mindset is a good compromise between General Personalize search and the specific personalized search.

If someone is doing an ongoing project on Google - it may be efficient for them to have their search proclivities default to a certain theme.

However, since personalized search is often an opt-in feature, it does allow those who want to turn it on or off to do so.

Click tracking can also be an asset when calculating the proclivities of a searcher.

But like everything, we are at the dawn of this techology - it will evolve and refine itself in the upcoming years.

By: Tom Olgin

Tom Olgin — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:00:06 +0000

Personalization can produce better search results. I recall reading an CACM article on personalization from some folks at PARC that showed encouraging results, despite the challenges posed by Raul.

Just because it is a difficult problem, does not mean it is not worth pursuing. In fact, just the opposite is true - the harder the problem the more value is created in the market by solving it.

By: MikeM

MikeM — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:59:49 +0000

On the surface Raul is correct however search visionaries are thinking floors above the surface.
One day personal search results will be refined to exacting results.
Somewhere at the end of a dark hallway at IBM, Google or FAST are groups working on just that.