Category: Of Note in Search Biz

The Evolving Search Interface: Mobile Drives Search As App

I've said before that search interfaces, stuck in the command line interface of DOS, will at some point evolve into applications on top of a commodity search index. I further opined that Bing, in particular Bing's limited but compelling visual search, was just such an example: search as an…

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I’ve said before that search interfaces, stuck in the command line interface of DOS, will at some point evolve into applications on top of a commodity search index. I further opined that Bing, in particular Bing’s limited but compelling visual search, was just such an example: search as an interactive, rich application, as opposed to search as a list of results.  

The commodity of search results is critical, but as we shift our usage to the mobile web, the use case for a list of results weakens. Instead, as this Bizweek article points out, we’re using apps. On their face, these apps don’t seem like search at all. Except they are.

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An Apple Search Engine?

….driven by the need to kick Google off the iPhone? An interesting idea. Worth thinking about…. From a Businessweek article: Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum's Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search…

….driven by the need to kick Google off the iPhone? An interesting idea. Worth thinking about….

From a Businessweek article:

Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum’s Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple’s engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says. “I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search,” he adds. “If there’s all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?”

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Oh, the Humanity: The Database of Intentions At Twitter Is Empty (After Two Weeks)

I was stunned to learn, via Danny, that our collective tweets seem lost to eternity (or at least, to search). While the data exists, tweets can't be found via search, which means they can't be found via the search API, which means…well, they can't be found. I hope this situation…

I was stunned to learn, via Danny, that our collective tweets seem lost to eternity (or at least, to search). While the data exists, tweets can’t be found via search, which means they can’t be found via the search API, which means…well, they can’t be found. I hope this situation is rectified, if only for history’s sake.

(Danny notes that they can be found using Google or Bing, at least for now. That’s a relief. But it does not bode well for Twitter’s ability to scale.)

3 Comments on Oh, the Humanity: The Database of Intentions At Twitter Is Empty (After Two Weeks)

That’s TWO Ads On Google’s Homepage

I remember the time when Sergey and Larry swore they'd never have ads on the homepage of Google. Last month I noted a big one for Chrome. Today there's an additional one. Now that's TWO ads! Google has its own products to market now, and it's using it's biggest…

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I remember the time when Sergey and Larry swore they’d never have ads on the homepage of Google. Last month I noted a big one for Chrome. Today there’s an additional one. Now that’s TWO ads! Google has its own products to market now, and it’s using it’s biggest firehose of attention to tell folks about them. Both are major new fronts in very large wars: Mobile and OS/Browser.    

How do you think this will effect its core brand?

34 Comments on That’s TWO Ads On Google’s Homepage

Fast Flipping Off Amazon’s Kindle

Everyone knows Kindle is a closed development platform (IE, there's not an app environment that lets developers make the Kindle platform better). Today I saw the news that Google has doubled the number of publishing partners who are now leveraging the company's "Fast Flip" e-reader software, and it got…

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Everyone knows Kindle is a closed development platform (IE, there’s not an app environment that lets developers make the Kindle platform better). Today I saw the news that Google has doubled the number of publishing partners who are now leveraging the company’s “Fast Flip” e-reader software, and it got me to thinking.  

First, Fast Flip is software that runs anywhere the web runs, including mobile apps. It has an Android and iPhone version, and I’m sure there will be a RIM version soon. And when Apple’s tablet comes out, and any other ebook/netbook competitor to Kindle, I’m sure Fast Flip will be there. Fast Flip is a web native app, and it plays nice with the web, from what I can see. And Google is clearly interested, as a company, in fostering developers to build out on its various platforms, from Android to Chrome to Google’s App Engine.

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What’s Up?

Of course, BingTweets was the first real time mashup from a major player in search (and Microsoft has already announced its intentions to go further ), but we're just at the start of where real time search might go. … We've seen a fair amount of innovation in search interfaces lately (here's more on Pivot , for example), but real time data presents a significant challenge.

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(This piece was written for the BingTweets blog and is part of an ongoing exploration of search underwritten by Microsoft. See my series on the interplay of search and decisions here, here, and here. I wrote the piece below before today’s web-wide conversation about content farms, but I think it’s related. We need new frameworks for search, and real time points us toward one potential path.)

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Google Is Failing More

Paul points it out as a failed dishwasher search. Mike complains about automated content as does RWW. And we all have experienced it: The Google ecosystem is failing more – failing to get us what we think we want. Failing to not frustrate us. Failing at the more complicated queries…

Paul points it out as a failed dishwasher search. Mike complains about automated content as does RWW. And we all have experienced it: The Google ecosystem is failing more – failing to get us what we think we want. Failing to not frustrate us. Failing at the more complicated queries we are throwing at it. Failing to be the Google that we came to love back when the web was small and Facebook was a way for Harvard geeks to try to get laid.

Now, Google’s ecosystem is ripe for a quick buck – “content farms” that build article pages cheaply to make a quick buck off AdWords. But these articles, at least for a portion of us, don’t really provide the answers we are looking for. (thanks @thejames for the pointers.)

As Paul puts it in bemoaning his fruitless attempt to use Google for a researching a dishwasher purchase:

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Google’s Real Time Rolling Out

Google's real time search integration, announced at Web 2 in October, is rolling out (good coverage from SEL). It'll be integrated as "Latest results." I'll be watching how this effects the traffic referral ecosystem across the web – that's the key. Will Twitter grow? Will Google start to obviate…

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Google’s real time search integration, announced at Web 2 in October, is rolling out (good coverage from SEL). It’ll be integrated as “Latest results.” I’ll be watching how this effects the traffic referral ecosystem across the web – that’s the key. Will Twitter grow? Will Google start to obviate some refers it’s now sending to Facebook? Or will the opposite occur?

Google’s announcement is here. NYT coverage is here.

1 Comment on Google’s Real Time Rolling Out

Google Wants Your Small Biz To Barcode Itself

Google has launched a "Favorite Places" program to jumpstart its local search business. I like the moxy, but the ecosystem is lacking a clear dose of "Why Should I Do This," at least from the point of view of the business. Or the customer, for that matter. The program…

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Google has launched a “Favorite Places” program to jumpstart its local search business. I like the moxy, but the ecosystem is lacking a clear dose of “Why Should I Do This,” at least from the point of view of the business. Or the customer, for that matter. The program has the same “Church lady dancing to rap” feeling that marks nearly all of Google’s socially-driven products.  

If Google is serious about this space, they best buy Foursquare, pronto, and let the folks there take over.

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What Are The Conversion Rates for Google’s “First Click Free”?

Google today announced a new policy in its ongoing attempt to reach detente with an increasingly querulous publishing industry. (For background, read Mashable’s piece).   A key piece of the new policy has to do with changes to Google’s “First Click Free” program. From Google’s announcement: One way we overcome…

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Google today announced a new policy in its ongoing attempt to reach detente with an increasingly querulous publishing industry. (For background, read Mashable’s piece).  

A key piece of the new policy has to do with changes to Google’s “First Click Free” program. From Google’s announcement:

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