Robert Scoble, wrote a particularly good piece with respect to search and why there are a number of critical deficiencies within the current search products from various vendors. In others words, the stuff sux. And he’s getting pounded on by the usual suspects with the exact stuff you’d expect.
– Not using enough words
– Not explaining enough of what you mean/want
– Talk to humans first
– Shilling for Microsoft.
In this case, tho, he’s so dead on that if he left Microsoft today, I’d write em a check to solve this problem because it is totally and absolutely something that needs to be fixed. And when fixed correctly is going to make Google/Yahoo!/MSN all look like black -n– white TV with rabbit ears for reception.
Not improved. Not Web two dot oh. Fixed.
Read on, figure it out, get a check.
First and foremost going to Google or MSN is nothing more then poking around in the hopes you will get something useful. Poking around is a term that Seth Godin put in his latest e-book missive which you can get here. I suggest you pay particular attention to page 11, where Seth says:
“Searching online should really be called poking online. Because that’s what you do. You poke around. You poke in Google or at Yahoo! and you poke at some ads.”
The e-book is a lead in for his new business called Squidoo which is an interesting take on people being experts on something, marshaling that expertise with the goal of helping people get answers. It will be fun to watch.
To understand my thesis on ‘it’s broken’, you can try the list of examples Robert laid out for you in his posting or just do this. Open your browser (click one), head on over to Google (click two), type in Java and hit the enter key (click three). In three clicks, you’ve accomplished nothing. It is one of those duh type moments. Scoble (or yours truly) will bitch that the search engine doesn’t know the difference between Java the coding language, the slang for coffee, or the travel destination. The ‘community’ will say, duh, you gotta do, blaah blaah blaah. The computer can’t read your mind, duh, it needs more words, or more whatever.
Wrong. It’s broken. All of what the computer needs is available right here and right now.
Consider this blog posting. If you go up and look at the sentence above which talks about “the travel destination”, you might say to yourself, hmm, I didn’t know Java was a travel destination. So you might go off, type “Java and travel” into your search engine and voila, pretty close to what you are looking for when you ask. Why?
Context.
Most of you have at one time or another, right mouse clicked and seen the “SEND TO” options.
For example, in WORD:
As you can see, it’s all about context. Send means these things in the context of where you are and what you are doing. Just as this example off my desktop also has context:
The next example is from Outlook. Consider what happens when you right mouse click on somebody’s name:
Again, context. I can call, email, schedule meetings, add, etc. And the additional actions place which has been empty since there are approximately zero ISVs actually exploiting this.
The point to all of this? Context.
The desktop and associated applications we all use need to have search implemented with context as the leading indicator of what you want.
First, the obvious, the right mouse click over a word:
What I did above, was to right mouse click on the word whatever in a Word document. As you can see, it gave me the options that are contextually relevant right at the time I’m working with the word whatever.
The right place for search is right where I am, inside of what I’m doing, right then.
It’s all about context. Right where the Synonyms option is, you find yet another pull down with results. You also see the option to “Look up…” and that’s the key.
Remember my Java example way above? Doesn’t it make sense to you to be able to highlight the words “travel destination”, in the context of the sentence where it is mentioned, and get the results about Java as a travel destination in the exact same way as you get synonyms above? You don’t need to type anything else. I can right mouse button you some options before we go into Google-land.
Or when you are inside this blog entry and see Seth Godin mentioned. It’s not linked so you have to open another browser window and type in Seth Godin, wade through the results and then click on something that looks like it might answer the question, who is Seth Godin. Doesn’t it make sense to be able to highlight his name, right mouse click and get some options that make contextual sense, like “who is Seth Godin” or “find a picture of Seth Godin” or whatever. The point here is context.
And this isn’t confined to the text applications.
Let’s say you are currently on Virtual Earth, and type in Toronto, Canada. Well, scratch that, Microsoft doesn’t have it running yet. Instead, we use Google’s map service to get to Toronto, Canada. Doesn’t it make sense that, in this context, search is going to mean different things to you?
Scoble had an example of HDTV. In Google’s map product, you can search for a local business. Bring up a town, type pizza and you get, surprise, pizza places. You don’t get companies that sell wholesale supplies or pizza ovens because the going in assumption is that you are on a map looking for a slice. But what happens if you are looking for a pizza oven or, in Robert’s case information about HDTV? Therein lies the challenge. If you were to highlight HDTV in this blog entry, right mouse button and get contextual options like what is HDTV, show me blog entries about HDTV, etc, you could narrow down the hunt for what you want.
And by creating a bit of an RSS like open standard, this SSSS (Search Solved Scoble Style) architecture would then be able to bring in tagging and all of the other things that help with context.
I know somebody is going to point me (and you) to writings about the semantic web and other such things. I’m not suggesting anything new here, rather the observation that we should use what we have. When you are on a shopping site and you highlight the phrase HDTV, there are a few obvious possibilities for search which could be presented to the user before they go off a hunting.
We can fixed a ton of what is broken and move ‘search’ closer to ‘results’
Scoblesearch.com was, when I typed this, available.
The contextual ecosystem of windows is fantastic. At least with real windows applications.
One of the first things I always teach people when I get my hand on them. Because it makes their lifes so much easier.
The second thing I tell them is how connected this knowledge is. Learn keyboard combinations in one application and you will happy in every other windows application which follows the standard.
Most MS applications do, but in some of them you still feel the heritage of not being 'born' at MS. In case you understand these too - context and transfer of knowledge - your learning experience will be just on a different speed.
I find it astonishing each time, how many people do not see the presented keyboard combinations in the menu.
And if you could help me out in bringing the word team to their senses to finally drop this useless feature for CTRL-Tab in Word and make it what it it supposed to be, I'd be really thankful. This is seriously the reason why I only work in Word on some times in a month.
Posted by: Nicole Simon | October 10, 2005 at 06:28
Another take on this is the difference between searching, browsing and navigating. All things one does regularly and naturally, but the computer world seems to jumble up into either one interface or the other with additional add-ons.
http://lucassmith.name/DrProlix/?p=43
Interesting read.
Posted by: J. Shirley | October 10, 2005 at 11:49
Yes - context is king.
That's what people are ripping Scoble on. More words means more context. However, that's fundamentally a weak excuse.
Search shouldn't be built assuming that people will have to LEARN how to use it. Search should be designed to make it as easy as possible for people to use.
Now, one point Scoble is making - I believe - is that the results aren't relavent to MOST people. A search engine should - without context - show the most popular results (or categories) first. Ideally, it should allow people to drill down into different categories of search results. MSN Search has research aimed at helping with this:
http://rwsm.directtaps.net/
.... but it's not very good. At all. Still, it's a few steps in the right direction.
Yahoo! is moving from a different angle: starting with your context. And, I think, it's probably the best one.
They're researching a context search. Pop a phrase/paragraph in there, and it magically generates keywords and searches for you.
http://yq.search.yahoo.com/
They've integrated it into Yahoo! News, etc.
You can use the service easily with the Yahoo! Toolbar; if you install the Y! Toolbar, and then highlight a phrase, a paragraph - anything - a context meny will pop up. One of those will be a purplish Y! icon, which you can select to do a context search. More details here:
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000177.html
That's one solution to "context", and quite a nice one. Interestingly, it hasn't gotten very much press - which is a pity.
Posted by: Michael Griffiths | October 10, 2005 at 22:15
Rick, you note that people respond to Scoble with this (I was one of them):
– Not using enough words
– Not explaining enough of what you mean/want
And then right away you say you need context, which is just another was of explaining what you mean/want. Context may be a little or a lot, but it is still more information.
You could probably look at recent stuff in the web cache, or recently opened documents and use that for basic context for a search assuming that my thoughts are somewhat clustered.
But highlighting "travel destination" when looking for Java is still using more words.
Your right click idea is a but simplistic because I am typically doing that while in an application which has a specific function (an OS is an application as well).
Within the browser though, there is no specific application. I could be making a purchase at ebay, or watching a newsclip at CNN, which are entirely unrelated, and therefore share no context. The browser is also no specifically aware of what I was doing.
The smartest thing I could think of would be for Google to use Desktop 2.0 as a snapshot of what you were most recently doing and what you most recently searched for as contextual input for a web search.
I bet that would give you 100% improvement over current searches. For example if I was at expedia and travelocity, then I searched for java, one could assume that I was looking for the travel destination.
Posted by: Larry Borsato | October 10, 2005 at 22:34
Could it be that Google has known how to monetize the power of context for quite a while?
http://adwords.google.com/
Posted by: Reginald Braithwaite | October 11, 2005 at 19:55