Comments on: It’s All In The [Search] Packaging

By: Greg Linden

Greg Linden — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:56:17 +0000

Om, on your quote from your article in Business 2.0 magazine:

"At a glance you can see what's important. Smart new companies are finally figuring out how to do this online, where there's too much content and not enough packaging."

I think one question to ask is whether the one-size-fits-all model necessary for off-line publications like newspapers makes sense for online aggregators of news.

Online, there is an opportunity to create a different package for each individual, personalizing what is important. In new media, information could be packaged on a one-to-one basis.

By: Andrew Thomas

Andrew Thomas — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:05:11 +0000

Mitchell Quinn said: "not to mention so called “consumer review” sites such as Ciao, Kelkoo, Pocket-lint, etc, which provide poor quality information on the hope of a sales hit."

Absolutely. Why doesn't Google just ban these useless market comparison sites from its search results? They're just another layer of crap we have to wade through before getting to what we want.

By: Gary Prosser

Gary Prosser — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:19:47 +0000

The challenge for software tool developers in search is emulating human judgement. In the meantime its interesting that dmoz.org (Open Directory) which is useful but limited, is still ranked 471 (by Alexa). Goog could usefully think about encouraging and cooperating with vertical search sites that have a strong human, therefore contextualised data, element.

By: Lydia Porter

Lydia Porter — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:03:02 +0000

Back in the 1980s, searching for information was something you needed a specialist for. Someone who was trained and experienced in not only knowing how to interrogate specialist databases, but how to identify the most reliable and valid results. When Google came along, most people decided it was easy enough to do the interrogation and validation themselves. You want to take a chance on unreliable, biased, inaccurate information, try Wikipedia. You want aggregation? Try a library. Maybe what is required is the specialist services of a trained human being again. Try a librarian.

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:36:55 +0000

Goog has simply established itself as the technologically best solution for the most number of people. It doesn’t preclude vertical sites from specializing to provide even more relevant results, say for venture capital, than Goog’s 63,900,000 results…

By: links for 2007-09-15 | Not the kinda cool you're looking for

links for 2007-09-15 | Not the kinda cool you're looking for — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:26:52 +0000

[...] It’s All In The [Search] Packaging (tags: future google search strategy technology ommalik) [...]

By: Brent Hopkins

Brent Hopkins — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 17:05:13 +0000

One important consideration which some of the other commenters have sort of hinted at is exclusion of unwanted information or results. Something as simple as a button to “exclude this site from future results” would go a long way toward eliminating the dross. Google’s Web History feature would seem to position them as a natural leader in this area. I have even suggested to them on several occasions that a simple user-ranking of results and particularly viewed results would be very powerful. Apparently that doesn’t fit their business model as an advertising company. Or maybe its a dumb idea, but I would like to see someone give it a try.

By: Online Market research company

Online Market research company — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:46:42 +0000

Aggregation with customisation is the future of search i.e. vertical search engine. Interesting thing is how will Google cope with all this?

By: Mitchell Quinn

Mitchell Quinn — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:13:27 +0000

It’s not the exposion of information which has made searching difficult, it’s the exposion of web bottom feeders, such as link aggregating sites with automatically generated pages which are nothing more than scraped scraps of text and associated advertising, not to mention so called “consumer review” sites such as Ciao, Kelkoo, Pocket-lint, etc, which provide poor quality information on the hope of a sales hit. In general I have no problem finding the information I am searching for unless my item of interest happens to fall into the hit zone of aformentioned sites, in which case I have to manually trawl through pages of garbage from companies who provide nothing of value to anyone.

By: ronald

ronald — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:10:12 +0000

Oh boy. All these people throwing around terms without a clear definition. human brain != boolean computer human information = data in context human context = related (data,events,knowledge, emotions ...) [ very simplified, but I don't want to break it down to Consciousness]

In other words if you don't know what I'm working on, you provide data to me. Which I put into context, thereby creating information.

Now let's plan a business trip to Mountain View. I create a meeting in my Calendar with a location in Mountain View. The system creates a Workspace on my Computer under which all data for this meeting will be aggregated and preserved from now on. If I get flight confirmation the system checks the date and relates it to the meeting and .... In other words if I go on my system to a specific Workspace all information for this context are there. Now if I share this with a back end server wouldn't the search be much more accurate?

Come on now, Microsoft could build this in 2 years if they would use their dead brains. Google will struggle, since they have no local context. But they are working on it. And the rest ...?

Ok I will get a coffee now, getting far to agitated .

By: Rikki

Rikki — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:25:05 +0000

It depends on what stage of Google you’re talking about. To begin with it was certainly a revolution in terms of search. However, as people learned to manipulate it, and it seems to focus more heavily on the advertising that keeps it in business, the quality of its results have gone down.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:45:52 +0000

Working for vertical, B2B, search / directory site I know that there are times where our site will have information available about a company that doesn’t even have a website. The role of specialized or vertical search sites will continue to grow as 2.0 content and apps take root.

By: Gena Alexander

Gena Alexander — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:50:27 +0000

See – no one believed me when I said Google broke the internet.

By: surya narayana saripalli

surya narayana saripalli — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:29:59 +0000

Will there be digital divide in providing separate servers for WEB-2.0,and web-3.0 Technologies. The answer is pending as some more navigational[air][personal in transit in traffic],and personalized web pages are going to jam the Net. surya

By: Second Brain - Organize Everything in Your Personal Internet Library

Second Brain - Organize Everything in Your Personal Internet Library — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:29:26 +0000

The time for smart aggregators

We think Google and the rest of the search crowd will be the most important traffic source for Second Brain. We are in the business of aggregating our users internet content into a personal library - a true vertical integrator for the individual. Makin...

By: Abhay Shete

Abhay Shete — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:26:35 +0000

Hello, Have been a regular reader of this blog. Wikipedia has become a great site to access "information" rather than the "search-find-click paradigm" as you mentioned. We are a three people startup based in Pune, India. We have been working on an "information-engine" which delivers "information" to the end users, rather than links of web-pages. Currently Wikipedia is manually driven, we have created a system which automates and rapidly accelerates the creation of information. To give an analogy, Wikipedia is like the early automotive industry, the assembly line was manually operated. Our system is the equivalent of a modern automated assembly line. The role of humans changes to setting parameters and inspecting results.

We have also used interesting tools to present this information to the end users. We just had an internal alpha release and would love to share some search results and further details with you.

Regards, Abhay.