Searching for the New New Search

Its interesting....you look at loads of new search technologies for years until you can't see the woods for the algorithms, and there is hardly a murmur - and then suddenly its all hot. Vertical search, Natural Language search, Serendipity Search.....suddenly its all happening. Again. (just Ask Jeeves).

Sigh deja view

So...back to some basics. Search 101 (expurgated version):

(i) You can only search what is searchable - ie what has some form of understandable taxonomy and metadata. If a fact falls in a forest and no one hears it.....

(ii) It is damned expensive to do this logging centrally, and it is an exponential curve...even the mighty Google runs out of oomph about...oh, 2006 anyone?.

(iii) The best way over this so far is the "folksonomy"...McTagging - the users input the metadata *as the content is created*.....

(iv) ...except users don't do this, or at best do it partially, or differently to every one else - unless you bribe 'em in some way. There is no user self interest in play yet (though there are some Flickrs of hope), so the folksonomy is a tragedy of the commoners

This is where we are today. Bad metadata and worse puns.

Now, Patrick's 2nd Net Rule states that The Long Tail shall always Rise. This means that the huge Content-o-Sphere out there will resolve into lots of niches, and these will be colonised by different metadata ecosystems, and will (very) probably be optimally searched in different ways. Let these be called Verticals if that helps sell your biz plan to the friendly VC.

Some are, shockingly dear reader, much, much more valuable than others. For these areas the race to colonise, contextualise and commercialise is already on.

Let the Metadata wars begin!!!

And the devil take the hindmost, and Google loses its shorts...er no, shirt. It gains shorts, right?

Now, there is one fascinating area which is - as yet - less trodden than most, and that is mobile search. Have you ever tried to search Google on your mobile? Right...its enough to make you want to actually call someone up and just ask!

So, getting search on a mobile to be easy will be a challenge, since the device is so darn small and the UI so darned clunky...when will they get this stuff on a Blackberry or even a Nintendo Lite for crying out loud!

But, getting it right on mobile will be very, very valuable because search is so very, very hard to do on them - but so, so useful. And they have a monetisation model today that doesn't need Web 2.0 adverts!

However, its non trivial to do because of that awful UI, so it will need to be a hybrid web/mobile play, and...well, you can pay for the rest of the advice....alan.patrick@broadsight.com


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