Mixed by Thomas Moreau (Head of Training @ Whatever) in Web search
July
An article originally posted on Search Engine Land
“Yahoo had little take-up of its social search product. I’ve never seen the company explain why. My own suspicion is that take-up was low because search is NOT a social activity. I believe people tend to search when they have an immediate desire that needs fulfilling, and taking time away from the search activity to “share” with others is a distraction. Consider the person who has a broken water pipe. They might search quickly to find a plumber. They aren’t likely thinking at that moment that they want to tag and classify the search they conducted, much less the plumber they called. They just want the pipe fixed!”
Read the full article at searchengineland.com
In my opinion…
This interesting post by Danny Sullivan talks about search 4.0 as the era of human added-value coming back into the relevancy algorithms. Indeed, everyone has an aera of expertise. And if one could use this expertise to surface the good from the bad and the ugly, then users would benefit from it. And while Danny writes that search is not a social activity, I really think that bringing social elements into search results is a great way to avoid inconsistencies. Indeed, what if the person who had a broken water pipe could rate the plumber, and recommend it to his friends? So that when they’ll search one, they’ll be able to find the recommended one, and be confident that he will do a great job? That is what search 4.0 means to me.
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