Posts Tagged ‘search’
How Twitter has evolved as a search engine
September 8th, 2009
We all know that Twitter has come a long way in a short space of time. Below are my thoughts on how Twitter has progressed as a search tool.
Stage 1
Due to Twitter opening up its API at a very early stage, third party Twitter apps have became a large part of the Twitter phenomenon. Twitter search tools were among the first to appear and were used primarily to monitor conversations at relevant events. Quotes were taken from the events, which helped to create a quick and easy blog summary.
Stage 2
Moving on from conversations, Twitter became a real-time breaking news service, with searches showing the latest information on news events of all types, a good example of which being the earthquakes in China and Mumbai bombings.
Twitter Searches were evolving from pure conversation to a hunger for instant real-time news. Twitter is now quicker than any news station when it comes to breaking news.
Stage 3
The next stage of Twitter was for it to be used as a real time help and recommendations search tool.
Example:
Can anybody recommend a good SEO partner?
Does anybody know of the best budget hotel to stay near central park NY?
These sorts of questions would lead to numerous people sharing experiences and sharing of links, especially when TINY url came into play.
Stage 4
Other searches started taking place in Twitter focused on Jobs, local events, classifieds, trends, sports scores and information, gig guides and events.
Stage 5
Finally the Celebrity search. Celebrities are often searched and quoted for sound bites in national and local papers via Twitter searches on their personal profiles. Celebrities also use Twitter as a quick fire response and personal promotion tool, for example: most celebrities on Twitter tweeted in response to the death of Michael Jackson.
Final stage
As more people use Twitter the search possibilities will grow, but for now Twitter is the premier search engine for real time news searches and quick recommendations. Search engines are now being built with Twitter searches in mind, e.g. Microsoft’s Bing has its search results sitting alongside its Twitter results for keywords.
A threat to Google?
Can Twitter smell Google’s fear?
March 5th, 2009
When Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, talks, people tend to listen. And so they should, Google has been pushing the digital revolution, and making money out of it, for many years. However, when Mr Schmidt decides to belittle a very popular, and most would argue useful service, people begin to listen even more, because there aren’t too many things coming out of the Google corporate mouth piece that haven’t been thought through and calculated.
So when Schmidt gave a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, and said Twitter and products of its ilk are ‘poor man’s email systems,’ we wonder what his real message is.
Analysing the statement doesn’t really help. Twitter wasn’t designed as a substitute for email, although there are of course general similarities, and the ‘poor man’ statement just seems unnecessary. So why? With the massive coverage that Twitter is receiving, it’s obvious that such a statement would be beamed around the world in an instant and not only aggravate the ever growing Twitter fan base but position Mr Schmidt as the villain. So again, I ask why?
Of course there was also much conversation on Twitter around this issue as the story broke and a theme became apparent, which is perhaps best encapsulated in Alexei Oreskovic’s post on Reuters.
Fundamentally, the quote is only half the story. What’s more interesting is why Mr Schmidt gave this response, which was apparently in answer to a question about Twitter’s real-time search capability, well known as not only a very powerful conversation mining and monitoring tool, but obviously offering Twitter a very valuable advantage if it was to go the ad-funded route and thereby pose a threat to Google.
So, behind this rather odd statement, can we sense a hint of competitive fear? Or was it merely a lapse in the usually focused Google comms machine?
Interestingly, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has replied to Mr Schmidt’s comment and said: “We think it’s important to introduce the power of a real-time network to even the weakest of signals around the world—as Twitter grows, we realise it’s not about the triumph of technology, it’s about the triumph of humanity.”
Touché! Or am I reading too much into the technology vs. humanity comment?
Chinwag Live: Search versus Recommendation a no-brainer debate
September 3rd, 2008
Last night’s Chinwag Live: Search v. Recommendation event was not the packed out, sweaty debacle that it usually is. My hunch is the motion of the debate was not as sexy as widgets or social media measurement, and was also pretty much a foregone conclusion. At the end of the day, there’s not much of a case that can be made to suggest recommendation/review sites will win out over super beast Google (the ‘search’ side of the argument quickly became a Google one - pointed out by a heckler who commented “let’s get off Google’s dick!”).
With that in mind, there was little debating going on, but some interesting points were made about recommendation sites from a B2C point of view - interestingly no one brought up the role they can play within a B2B audience. To summarise:
- Only a fraction of a percentage of internet users add ‘+review’ to their search phrase - something that I was very surprised about as I do it all the time! I’d be interested to see more detailed stats on how search linguistics change between searching for specific information, and searching for inspiration or trusted reviews.
- Recommendation sites know very little about their active reviewers at the moment, and it was agreed that this detail is currently difficult to obtain. Panelist Walid Al Saqqaf, co-founder & COO of TrustedPlaces admitted that only 17% of his registered users write reviews, while a “much smaller” percentage of unregistered users are active reviewers.
- YouTube is becoming a popular destination for searching for reviews, particularly for mobile phones and digital cameras, and has the potential to overtake written review sites in the future.
- Twitter is also increasingly being used for micro-reviews.
- It is currently very difficult to measure reviewer intent across recommendation sites, which is limiting their usefulness and relevancy. According to Chinwag panelist Lisa Ditlefsen, Head of Search at Base One, Microsoft is currently looking to limit the number of review sites that rank in natural search rankings.
- People are generally more happy to give out personal information about themselves on social networks such as Facebook and Bebo, than on review websites such as Tripadvisor. The networking opportunity, from a business or personal perspective, is a key aspect that review websites need to tap into.
A good review of the event is also available on The Crowdstorm blog.
Cuil cooling down - a month on!
August 19th, 2008
After a blaze of publicity Cuil launched on July 28th 2008, some of the headlines below suggested Cuil was going to overtake Google as the major force in search.
Cuil Launches — Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?
New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google
Search site aims to rival Google
Cuil search engine aims to challenge Google
Cuil might just be cool enough to become the Google-killer in search
Cuil Search Engine Out to Challenge Google
However, the graphs below from Twitter, Alexra and Technorati show an alarming drop-off in the volume of people talking about Cuil and visiting the site over the past month since its launch.
Twitter Mentions (Cuil in the red, Google in the blue) - click on graph to see larger graph.
Traffic History form Alexra
Technorati blog mentions of Cuil
Cuil blog trends vs Google
All the graphs say pretty much the same thing - after an impressive start Cuil has slipped back in-line with all the other wannabes!
Here are the headlines that seem to have the correct answer:
Why Cuil Is No Threat to Google
Cuil not a Google killer - yet - Techland
Can Cuil kill Google? Not yet - Machinist - Salon.com
The New Cuil Search Engine Sucks - Columns by PC Magazine
Cuil is not so cool - The INQUIRER
Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land summed it up by saying “Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you.”
Will PRs and journalists own natural search?
July 23rd, 2008
You might say, “who cares?”, but for me this is a refreshing new angle on the ‘who owns online PR?’ discussion that has been going on within the social media industry for a while. Of course I’m going to like suggestions that PRs might be in line to own SEO, but setting my vested interests aside, this line of thought helps explain why it is crucial that journalists and PRs understand the long-term trends that are happening in natural search.
Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker made his own rather crude observations on the subject on Monday, in his overly optimised article, “Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it.” He doesn’t say anything new - online headlines have always been important for driving traffic and natural links, and the only difference is that journalists are waking up to the impact optimised copy can have on their authority and popularity rankings - but the article drives home the SEO control that journalists have at their fingertips, should they choose to use it intelligently.
Similarly, Leon Bailey Green has today contributed a post to the E-Consultancy blog entitled: “Is the role of the SEO dead and should PRs own natural search?“, where he argues “off-site optimisation, link building or link baiting, should actually be in the domain of PR professionals”. He concludes “so if a web developer can build a search engine friendly website, a content writer knows how to write search engine friendly copy and an online PR guru can get blogs/websites/forums to link to that content, where does that leave an SEO?”
Regardless of who might own SEO in the future, or whether anyone will, it’s becoming more and more important for PRs and journalists to have a basic understanding of how relevancy, authority and quality of content will increasingly be the metrics used by search engines to rank sites. In addition, social networks are in some cases beginning to displace search, by creating trusted networks of relevant recommendations - which will make the role that PR plays even more important.
The tactics of PR and journalism don’t necessarily need to change, but individuals working in these sectors will have to be very good at what they do.
Natural search can appear very scientific, and I personally am on a mission to understand the techniques as well as I can…but ultimately, PR as an industry needs to focus on the quality of its output. There’s no place for fakers!