Where is search going?
June 17th, 2008 adminBeen so busy with my projects recently (two almost ready to launch..) that I haven’t had any time at all to write in this. Until today.
I’ve been considering the direction that search is going, and many people have some very wide ranging ideas. Here’s a list that I found on this thread..
1. Regrouping of universal results by concept instead of content type, for rapid disambiguation of concepts related to a query and better targeted search advertisements.
2. Creator labeled content using something like openID, with metadata citing information such as editor, site owner, content creator, approved syndication locations, etc.
3. Object level ranking for named entities, with more answers shown directly within search results, and more final destination links (like Google’s site links) listed under a search result, including results from other sites.
4. Better use of facial recognition and image recognition techniques so that statistical image models can be used to index pictures that don’t have accompanying meta data.
5. Better use of user information in search sessions culled from query logs and tracking data from browsing history to aid in query expansion and refinement suggestions for informational and transactional queries, and in determining best final destination pages for navigational searches.
6. Increased use of geolocation information with mobile phones to identify the locational sources of queries, and to automatically tag mobile phone camera images and identify landmarks and locations, provide private shared maps, supply human friendly driving and walking and transit directions with ads for businesses and services along the way.
7. Search kiosks in shopping and resort areas, tied to billboard advertising, displaying business sales and available inventories and coupons and menus and wait times at restaurants, enabling the taking of reservations for those restaurants, and more.
8. Present day and future looking decision-making search tools for business and government and policy makers, based upon information taken from sources like news articles/announcements/press releases, that can enable those decision makers to base their actions on a more informed understanding of the activities that are, and will be taking place around them.
9. A deeper integration of desktop and Web based search, providing automated query results related to the content being used or recently used or viewed by people working upon desktop documents, reading emails, updating calendars, etc.
10. Targeted online advertising based upon actions taken offline, such as credit card purchase, television viewing, attending events, and others.
I think 7 and 10 are the most realistic. 10 in particular is very likely, and I base this on the introduction of both Google TV Ads (which can be worked into Google Analytics) and Google Press Ads (which.. can be worked into Google Analytics). As these two features grow, many ‘brokers’ in media firms will find there jobs increasingly more competitive as the advertising space becomes more accessible. This is a very very good thing. Competition is good.
I’m always hearing people talk about how social networking, and targeted ads based on demographics is going to be the next big deal. The only problem I have with this is that what advertisers want is volume, not lower costs. Advertisers already work to CPAs from the TV/press world, that are usually 5-10x higher than search. I have clients who I could offer a 50% drop in CPA for a 10% drop in volume from search, and they would decline. In an advertisers world - well we just want more volume. Because of this, I think that the future of search will be mobile, just due to accessibility. As handsets become more internet designed, volumes will increase. In Japan people often buy all sorts of products via mobile browser, so withdrawing the access restriction (a large computer) is the best way to increase volumes.
One person mentioned search analysis going a stage further and ‘reading’ documents for you, making results considerably more relevant. I think this would be an incredible feat of programming, that will eventually happen. But will increase search complexity- probably not for everyone. A future Google pretender will produce something of this kind for the academic/research world I fancy. An indexing service with considerable depth, that will likely require some training to use. Then again - Google will probably produce this themselves.
My overall prediction is fairly simple; the convergence of advertising technologies- TV/Press/Online into a single entity. And the rise of Mobile internet, with the next (possibly next, next) generation of handsets. Full streaming content to the handset, music/video and voip?
Anyway..