The Future of (Google) Search Odyssey: a Peek into 2010
It wouldn’t have taken Odysseus to get home to Ithaca 11 years had he been equipped with an iphonus googlia. Telemachus and Penelope would have read his Twitterificia messages, and the suitors would have trolled the family blog at the most. Search would have served to be more efficient along the time-space continuum as it is supposed to fulfil this very mission these days.
But how are we aided better in the coming years of search? Gord Hotchkiss has interviewed Marissa Mayer at the recent SES conference. One of the most important Q&A’s in the interview (predictions Marissa makes) is as follows:
“Gord: So, we’re almost going from a more linear presentation of results, very text based, to almost more of a portal presentation, but a personalized portal presentation.
Marissa: Right and I think as people, one, are getting more bandwidth and two, as they’re more savvy with how they look at more information, think of it this way, as more of serial access versus random access.”
It is true, and we can go even further (and I do not mean here the multi-touch Minority Report style presentation Jeff Han and others have been heavily working on). If search is a database of intentions, and if search results are already presented in an order of importance, can we expect to have a rotating order of the results based on the intentions search engines see us projecting into them?
If I make a short introspective research on what type of info search I do, I would roughly put it into 4+1 main categories:
Contact type (actionable contacts like phone numbers, emails, addresses, maps, opening hours, staff etc.)
Description style(very much like Wikipedia entries, or more precisely, sub-entries, e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans rather than the full bio of LHO - and here I feel the need and a potential future development: Wikipedia entries could have premalinks for sub-entries too)
Discussion type (interviews, presentations where arguments for or against a topic are presented with authentic, credible and thought-provoking participants, think tanks, and of course also shopping comparison pages come in the picture here)
Audio-Video content (you may argue that it is just a sub-category of Description and Discussion, but my own usage differentiates the non-text medium)
Image (photos, paintings, cartoons, etc.)
So based on these four, the dashboard view of a future-compatible search for me would be in the form of a rhomb-like arrangement, where the middle one, the heart of the rhomb, is based on how the search algorithm has detected my search intentions in line with the above 4+1 usage types
Something like this:
In my personally developed portal search, I have simulated to search for the ‘giant ant eater’ (OK, no simulation, I must admit that I have done that. Sorry guys.).
Image: I have a photo of the Giant Ant-eater in mid position. This gets in central position as a strong hook. Clicking on this photo I would get to further pics, but not to the usual list, instead I could see grouped results (let’s say one Nature photo style, one Cute version, one Cartoon, one Anatomic, etc.).
Description: This upper left corner, traditionally pulling our attention, is for Wikipedia (and alike) stuff. Here, I would get a cluster of 3 best results - leaving it up to the machine and human algorithm what 3 are the best based on my personalized search history, rss feeds, etc.
Audio/ Video: the same applies here as with the image. One click takes me to further videos, again, not a list, but a sorted presentation. Here I have included a New Orleans Audubon Zoo Giant Ant Eater - based on my IP address.
Discussions/ Interviews: this one may be by biologists, nature photos, bloggers etc. Instead of a descriptive style there is a conversation, a dialog going on, which lets me shape my thoughts (this time it is not the most relevant, that’s why it got the lower corner)
Contact: I think in this case this is the least probable intention (if I find out that I can see giant anteaters in my location, I will submit further search terms I guess - once that I have been shown other results based on my IP address). Yet, contacting the nearest zoo (in this case the Audubon Zoo) would immediately show the phone number, address and small map, plus opening hours. The most ideal is to have the phone, mail, mini-map in one chunk right on the SRP.
So this is a highly simplified dream scenario I could happily handle in the future (maybe). Especially if intention groups in the rhomb/ rhombus are ordered well, and maybe I don’t even need to click through to another site if I get what I want on the first blink.
As you can see I have instinctively left out sponsored results. Or not quite. Well performing, informative, valuable sponsored links could get into all of the above intentions, if appropriate. But why not have sponsored images? Why not put a rival zoo or an animal preservation organization sponsored link below the Number 1 Contact result (in this case, right below the data of Audubon Zoo)? Sponsored results could also come below the folder, but not really on the right side as it would be too much clutter. Portals by nature will feel more packed than a two-column list.
Hm. What will be the future of paid search if Google is getting more user-friendly? Quite controversially for Google’s mission and its business model, strcing for richer search experience also means that new advertiser competition model needs to be developed as this gives the spinal cord of Google revenue. Fewer competitors, less revenue.
Having the present two-column arrangement - I suppose - gives the most chance for advertisers. So what will be the paid search strategy for the future portal search presentation in 2010? Hell, I don’t know. We can guess around, that’s all. One thing is sure in Google, we are already dealing with universal search, we are already dealing with expanding paid search approaches (paid results in Google Maps. But this expanded type of advertising -overarching text ads - has not been built into the video and image search - really don’t know why though. But here comes Marissa’s hint at a possibly coming change in this:
“Marissa: I think that there will be different types of advertising on the search results page. As you know, my theory is always that the ads should match the search results. So if you have text results, you have text ads, and if you have image results, you have image ads. So as the page becomes richer, the ads also need to become richer, just so that they look alive and match the page. That said, trust is a fundamental premise of search. … Our one promise on our search results page, and I think that will stand, is that we clearly mark the ads. ” So let’s prepare for display ads here in New Orleans, and all over the search globe on search results pages. Creative banners and click to play videos stepping out of the content networks and seeping into visualized SRPs. Marked.