Consumer Search

Lycos closes doors in Europe

Ron Miller — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:00:13 -0500

EContent had a blurb this week that Lycos Europe shareholders had voted to liquidate its assets. Lycos is still operating in the United States, but the once leading search engine has certainly fallen. Back in its heyday, in the late 90s, before Google was a verb, Lycos was a go-to site. This is one more sign, as though we needed one, of the shift in power in online search engines. Article

Can Google dominate enterprise search?

Ron Miller — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:08:13 -0400

Michelle Manafy wrote a piece on EContent Magazine's website summarizing the recent Enterprise Search Summit West. According to her report, Stephen Arnold's keynote predicted that Google, the definitive consumer search, is so popular that we might as well raise the white flag and just start building add-ons to support Google in the enterprise. Arnold thinks Google will eventually dominate enterprise search just as it has consumer search. I'm not ready to concede the enterprise search market to Google just yet.

Whenever I talk to people in the search industry, they are quick to point out that while Google works well on the open web, it's less reliable in the enterprise. In fact, I wrote about this recently in Enterprise search is not a simple matter. In a recent conversation with Mark Bennett, CTO at New Idea Engineering, a search consulting firm, he pointed out that Google loses its advantage inside the firewall. Bennett says their ranking algorithm, what he calls the "secret sauce," really doesn't apply and Google is left using the same search techniques as other vendors.

Sue Feldman, an IDC analyst also spoke at the Summit, according to Manafy. Feldman pointed out that people tend to ask lousy questions, which is really important when considering Google in the enterprise. Bennett explains that when people don't enter very good search queries on the open web, you can still find the right answer because there are a myriad of possibilities, making it more likely you'll find the correct document. But when you move into the enterprise there may only be a couple of good results. Without a good query, it's much easier to miss.

Enterprise search is still a tough nut to crack. Users may demand Google-like functionality, but I don't think Google is necessarily the final answer to search in the enterprise.

For more:
- read the full Manafy article on EContent
- and this article from The Goose Quacks

Google's Mayer says search is 90 percent there

Ron Miller — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:56:52 -0400

In a wide ranging interview with the LA Times last week, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, talked about the company she's worked for the last 10 years. Mayer has seen Google grow from startup mode to worldwide technology force. She covered a lot of ground in the interview, but as TechCrunch pointed out, one particular answer stood out in which she stated that search is practically solved:

"I think there will be a continued focus on innovation, particularly in search," she said. "Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95 percent of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10 percent."

Really, she thinks it's that far along? I'm not so sure, especially in the enterprise. And as we move forward, semantic search, better video search technology and increasing innovation will drive dramatic improvements over today's search results. In fact, in July AIIM released a report on enterprise search that found that most enterprise users were unhappy with the state of enterprise search. This is a serious content management issue because if you can't find the content inside the enterprise, it's not doing employees a lick of good.

To give Mayer the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she was talking about consumer search, which is probably much further along than its enterprise counterpart. But 90 to 95 percent is probably still being generous. There's still a lot of garbage in results. There's still a problem when your enter a search with multiple possible meanings, such as "Jaguar," and get cars, animals and operating systems all bunched together (and even Google can't differentiate among the differences in meaning). Yes, Google gets you a good answer a good portion of the time, but there's still a healthy amount of time where it's wrong; it's probably more than 5 to 10 percent of the time.

For more information:
- read the entire LA Times interview

Related Articles:
The search is on
Is search really 90 percent solved?

Ex-Google employees launch new search engine

Ron Miller — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:14:17 -0400

The web was buzzing this week with news of a new search engine, started by ex-Google employees and purported to be the next Google killer. The new engine, called Cuil and pronounced 'cool,' debuted on Monday morning and had trouble keeping up with traffic as curious searchers bombarded the site. Those who were able to access Cuil saw a simple search box, much like Google, but one that differentiated itself by using a black background. The search results have a longer document summary than Google, and present readers with a section called "Explore by Category," which provides a way to narrow your search further in a similar manner to Ask.com. One point of controversy, beyond the spotty first-day service, was a claim that it had the biggest index with more than 121 billion pages. This after Google claimed to have an index in excess of 1 trillion pages just last week. Article

AIIM study: Enterprise search needs work

Ron Miller — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:26:09 -0400

Last week, AIIM released a comprehensive review of Enterprise Search called "Findability: The Art and Science of Making Content Easy to Find." The report, which is based on research with 500 enterprise search users across a range of jobs and experiences, found that people were strongly influenced by their web consumer search experience, with 82 percent of those surveyed agreeing or strongly agreeing that "the consumer web created increased demand for findability." What's more, 50 percent believe the search they use inside their companies is worse or much worse than the company's consumer facing website. The worst part of it is that almost half believe their company has no formal findability goal. This study should have an impact on content management because ultimately, the underlying system is only as good as a person's ability to find and retrieve the information stored in the repository. This report suggests that a crucial piece of the content management puzzle still needs work.

For more:
- read about or purchase the study