Search 1.x » People

The Dawn of Conversational Searching

Felix — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:37:00 +0000

The popularity of the Twitter Service has created a lot of chatters, chatters that are

1. Less than 140 characters long,
2. Very easy to publish anytime, anywhere, ANY PLATFORM
3. Mostly rubbish about what people had for lunch!

However, similarly to what happened to the evolution of blogs, more reputable (and knowledgeable!) people and companies are starting to use twitter as a mean of communicating, branding and marketing mechanism. As a result, there are actual quite a lot useful information in the tweets that people produce today.

Now in order to leverage these information you can follow people’ tweets all day, or you can search people’s tweet, for me, searching is a better use of my time and that’s when a number of the new conversational search service comes in handy.

Twitter search allows to search for what about what is happening now and what people are talking about now. The results are gathered from people’s tweet now or in the last hour or so and hence the other name given to this type of search “Realtime Search”

Whilst you are mostly searching through people’s chatters which are not exactly high quality content, it does have some interesting and useful applications. Firstly, since it is much easier to twitter than to setup a blog site and provide good blog content, you will see contents you normally don’t see in blogs from people who don’t really know how to blog. What good is this search and what useful information can you find? I can think of at least 4 applications:

1. Verify whether some web service is down: There has been numerous time when I am having issues with Gmail and I wasn’t sure whether it was Gmail or something wired with my wireless/network/firewall/ISP, a quick search on twitter will easily reveal whether 3 millions other web users are complaining about the same thing.

2. Product Release: Twitter now is often the first place you hear about new product releases.

3. Search for discount coupons: This one I am keen to try out one day.

4. The very latest gossips about _ _ _: Now this could be a celebrity, politician or anything you have a interested about and can not wait for the bloggers to catch up.

I’d like to think of Twitter search as “a box of chocolates, and you never know what you gonna get!” hence the best way to find out its value and effectiveness is to just try it out.

If you use Firefox You can even integrate Twitter Search Results right into your normal Google Search Results by following these tips from the good folks at Lifehacker.

I am now so excited about what I will find in Twitter every time I do a Google Search!

Since Twitter is not the only realtime microblogging service, we are also starting to see the emergence of meta search engine or search aggregation site that allow you to search across these micro blogging sites such as Twitter and Friendfeed. One such site is Whostalkin.

I personally think this is one of the most exciting search development since the Googzilla has taken control of our search experience, watch out for this space!

I am also pretty sure there are lot of other interesting applications of conversational/realtime searching, so let us know what you think!

UPDATE: Just came across this fantastic post by Chris Allison on how to get the most out of your Twitter search with tips on how to use the advanced search features!Similar Posts:

Google Helps You Search For The Spoken Words

Felix — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:51:00 +0000

If you are like me, you probably have some interest in the 2008 US presidential election. In order to help you make your mind up in terms of who is the better candidate, you might have also been wondering about the position of the two presidential candidates on various issues. Well wonder no more, thanks to Google’s new audio indexing technology (Gaudi), you can search through exactly what the the candidates have said about various issues !

Google has tried to embed (and since taken off) this technology in various parts of YouTube, but I found the best place to test it out to be right from the Google Gaudi Labs Page.

For example, say you are interested in what Obama has said about “NASA”:

Google will find you all the clips where NASA was spoken by Obama (displayed on the left), you can then play the clips on the right hand side. If you click on the play button on the right hand side, Google will even take you directly to the section where NASA was spoken! It doesn”t get easier than this in terms of searching for what the candidates have said about a particular issue. At the moment you can also search through all the videos in the YouTube political channel to finds what any other politicians have said about certain issues, just click on “All Politicians”

Does it work ? Well the transcription is not perfect and the search sometimes find wrongly transcribed word, but it is certainly usable. I suspect the slight hit and miss nature of this technology is what’s holding Google back from general public consumption.

I blogged about Blinkx attempt in trying to index the spoken words, who certainly has a lead in this space of deep indexing of videos. Google is now well and truly venturing into this area, be it slowly and carefully as to not disappoint and damage its rock solid reputation in Search. There is no question that deep indexing of videos and transcription of spoke words has tremendous potential in unleashing the value of more unstructured contents.

BTW, you can also add this technology as a Google gadget at your iGoogle Page.

Check it out and let us know what you think !Similar Posts:

Google’s Innovation Dilemma

Felix — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:08:37 +0000

It’s been a while since Google came up with any innovation around their main search offerings (in fact, I can’t remember what has ever changed since I started using Google search other than some re-arrangement of the results page). On one hand it is a testament to how good Google Search is, on the other hand, you have to ask the question of whether they are playing safe and sticking with what has proven to be winning formula.

I am a firm believer that if you are not making mistakes, then you are not trying hard enough. Google has made plenty of mistakes around various parts of their products portfolios, (i.e Poor acceptance of the original Google Reader which has now become one of the RSS readers) but no one can say that they have made a wrong step when it comes to their main Search offering because they haven’t made any significant changes.

OK, OK, I know Search represent 95% (or is that 99% ?) of Google’s revenue which means it’s something you don’t want to mess around with. Hence the Google Innovation Dilemma, do you stick with the safe option of keeping what works, or do you innovate for the future and the goods of your customer but risk making a wrong step.

Full credits to Google for trying thought.The latest attempt being the Google experimental search views that is available at the moment.

Are they ground breaking innovations ? I personally don’t think so, are they worthwhile feature that help me as a Searcher ? I have reservation on that one as well.

Alternate views for search results

“See results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. With these views, Google’s technology extracts key dates, locations, measurements, and more from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension.”

Other than the keywords that Google suggest us to try, I couldn’t get a results that I can see the value of this option.

Keyword suggestions

“As you type your search, Google’s technology provides alternative suggestions to your queries in real time”

This feature has actually been around for a while via the Google toolbar, never found it to be of any value for me.

Keyboard shortcuts

“Navigate search results quickly and easily, minimizing use of your mouse. Current keyboard”

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS AS AN INNOVATION ????!!!!!

contextual search navigation

“contextual search navigation allows you to search deeper in a particular type of content or to search related terms”

This has the potential to be a killer innovation as Google try to cluster the main concepts and type of results and guide you through what you are searching for. For example “Python” can mean either the snake or a programming language and the search engine should recognise that and guide the user and try to understand the difference in concepts as well as the different type of content the user might be interested (code, book, etc.).

I would say these are good attempts by Google, but it still leaves me wanting more, particular around concept based navigation which cluster based search engine such as Clusty does extremely well. Try searching for “bass” and Clusty will suggest and try to work out wether you are searching for Bass (the fish) or Bass (the musical instrument).

I am disappointed with the innovation that Google has released, but I have no doubt they have more radical updates that they are working on. For example, I blogged about SearchMash which is actually Google testing various new Search offerings under a completely different brand. Whether they release these new features at a faster pace and integrate them into their offerings, is the key dilemma that I think Google faces.

What do you think ?Similar Posts:

Personal Assistant to go with Your Search

Felix — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:48:49 +0000

ChaCha.com has an interesting spin on the whole idea of search. It thinks that part of the problem of searchers not being able to find the contents that they are looking for is the searchers themselves. In another words, they don’t know how to look for it.

I tend to agree with it after seeing how some of my friends search for information on the web. The matter of the fact is that most people simply aren’t aware or know the advanced capabilities of search engine nor do they know the nuisance associated with selecting the right keywords only and excluding keywords that will pollute your results.

Kudos to Chacha for coming up with a business model which links volunteers (or do they get paid ? I am not sure) on the web with searchers who are unable to find what they are looking for and offer a human guided search experience.

The whole chcha search experience turns the Google mentality upside down and put a human being right next to you as you conduct your search. The guide will verify what you are searching for, find the best results, present it to you and ask for your confirmation. Kinda like a tour guide except its for free. I found the service works amazingly well.

Would I use it for my day to day search ? Probably not, would I recommend it to less experienced search users such as my parents ? Absolutely ! The assistance provided by humans on ChaCha.com is timely, seamless, well executed and effective, I can imagine it being a God send for people who are not familiar with computers, Internet or Search engines. In the future if someone calls me and ask me to help them find something on the web, I might just point them to Chacha.com and know that they are in good hands….

The only interesting thing about the human guide model is as it get’s popular, how they can keep scaling it up and maintain the quality of the service offered. I just can’t see the numbers adding up if they have to start paying these personal search assists, I hope it stays up as there is definitely a place for it.

Better check it out while it still lasts.

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