We’ve known it for a while… Search is destined to change. It has to. There is so much info out there, and so much crap, that the existing model of typing in 2-3 words and clicking through Google’s or Yahoo’s top results isn’t going to cut it for much longer.

There’s local search, intent-drive search, personalized search, Web 2.0, yadda, yadda, yadda. Personally I’m big on intent-driven search. This gives users results based on their search intention; commerce or research or something in between. Although not a perfect model, Yahoo has a nice beta example here: Yahoo! Mindset - where you can manipulate a slider from “shopping” to “researching” and see the results change in real time.

The most buzz right now is coming from Web 2.0. Digg.com, del.icio.us, Yahoo My Web 2.0, blog search, Google Co-op, etc. These are emerging technologies and I’m just not quite sure how they’re going to fit into search in the real world. My instinct is to say that I trust an algorithm, with some user controls, more than a “community” of anonymous users. But, I’m also in the middle of reading The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and I understand the concept that getting advice from a crowd may actually be better and could provide a closer match to what I’m searching for.

It’s interesting to think about where search is heading and exciting to be involved with an industry that has so much opportunity to evolve. In several years I’m not sure that there will be a place for “search engine optimizers” as we know them today. But that will be okay, I’ll be ready for a change by then anyhow.

The author of this article, Paul Kedrosky, seems to imply that it’s all going the way of paid search, that natural results are meaningless:

“Today a certifiably better search algorithm is a meaningless and abstruse academic notion.”

Business 2.0:The Untapped Search Business

People have been saying that for a while; I think there will always be a place for natural search in some form, though. Because we all know that if it can be bought, anyone can and will buy it. We’re too cynical to trust advertising and advertising only.


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