I am not expert at the deeper intricacies of Search, so this white paper on the ways to capitalize on direct navigation -- people using seearch engines to reach very specific ares of content on web sites more quickly -- was quite interesting and useful. From FairWinds Partners LLC:
I cover a lot of next gen search stuff here, and virtually every time I do I get emails saying that there is a similar solution founded 12 minutes before the provider I highlight with similar attributes.
So let’s start by saying that search offerings are OF COURSE similar, but that the successful ones are going to add a simple and intuitive layer on top of basic search functionality – one that has telegraphic uiser appeal.
SearchMe certainly meets those criteria. It is based upon the simple premise that seeing a thumbnail of the pages in the results will help users more quickly and easily find the content they want. Here’s a screen:
It’s that freakin’ simple. Here’s how they describe themselves:
Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through.
Hey, I like shiny bells and whistles as much as the next person, but sometimes simple is best. Regular people have no interest in spending an hour learning how to use a new search tool. With SearchMe, the learning curve is a straight line.
As you can see, rolling over a result makes a small version of the page appear in the top of the results page, in a sort of iPod like interface. It is enormously helpful. Want to snag a picture? Then go to a page where the thumbnail shows pictures. Etc.
With all the search start ups out there, the battle for supremacy is going to be mighty tough – and indeed supremacy may not be an appropriate goal for the future goven that other areas of the web have totally fragmented. Who’s to say search won’t go that way at all. But however the market evolves, SearchMe has one big advantage going for it: useful simplicity.
The long tail has been so often discussed that I hesitated to even make this post, but there's a great guest post over on the HitWise blog you may want to hear about.
Bill Tancer, head of research for Hotwise, says that that tail is a lot longer than you might have expected.
The percentage of searches represented by the top keywords is actually a lot smaller than you might thing. What that means is that searches are a lot less concentrated in a few terms than you might have thought. Here are the stats for the percentage of all search traffic represented by the following numbers of words.
• Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic • Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic • Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic • Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic
You should read the post to hear the methodology, but the implications are pretty clear. In Tancer's own words:
In summary, the long tail aspect of the search is true, but the data tells us that there may really be no head or body. When it comes to search, virtually all traffic is long tail and the word “long” doesn’t do the length of the tail justice.
I got an email last week from Matt Lorenzen, VP of Product for KallOut, a pretty revolutionary new way to "do" search using either IE or FireFox.
Before I did the install, just for kicks I kept count of the number of searches I do in a typical work day. The number (on Friday, a typical day in terms of my activity) was 311. That's a lot of pageviews for my Search choice, Yahoo.
You know I review a lot of products and platforms and apps and all the rest here, and I generally don't say negative things. I prefer to use silence for things I don't like. Well, the fact that I am writing about it is an indication that I like KallOut. But an even BETTER indicator of how much I like KallOut is the fact that I downloaded the application onto all four of my PCs. This thang puts the K in Kool.
Yes, you do have to download it. That'll turn off some of you. And I get that. But it's worth the download.
Watch this vid to see how it works. No asterisk on works.If the proof is in the pudding, here's a nice pudding commercial:
My test drive was pretty extensive, but here is an example:
I highlighted the name "Sarah Palin" on Wonkette.com, and about one second later the little speech bubble box lighted gold. By rolling over that gold box, a Kallout appears that offers a variety of content choices. Click on a choice and up comes the article or photo or whatever. See below:
That's right boys and girls, you get to consume the KallOut content without leaving the page you are on.
KallOut combines content from a broad range of sources. You can go into the settings and favor or disfavor sources as you wish. For example, below I show you how to eliminate the evil of non Yahoo search engines. ;-)
Two clicks and you can make it Yahoo pristine!
Oh anyway, my love for Yahoo notwithstanding, the flexibility of this tool is rather impressive.
In addition to allowing you to do KallOuts on IE and FireFox, the tool also works in Office applications and PDFs, which will also come in very handy. KallOut can also be used as a search window direct from the desktop by simply clicking on the icon in the task bar. You can also "store" KallOuts by minimizing them for use later.
So, another thing you may be wondering is how this will affect the browser based search. Lee Lorenzen, CEO, stated on his blog:
While “browser-based search” will always be important, our early data shows that “selection-based search” can generate an incremental number of total searches per user per day that ranges from 1x to 3x the number of browser-based searches. At scale, this tripling of the number of search queries performed has the potential to dramatically increase the size of the search query pie and convince the world that search is not a zero-sum game.
Since this is a marketing blog, I wondered how they expect to make money, and if you can "buy" results like you do in google or yahoo pages. The answer is that they have a number of plans in the works from text based to graphical, so watch for some major announcements shortly. In their communications to me, Lee Lorenzen, the CEO emphasized "Our top priority is that any ads we decide to show in KallOut are appreciated by our users and don’t distract from the information they are seeking."
Currently they seem even more focused on growing share and installs, which makes sense. No sense trying to sell marketing opps until you have eyeballs. I'll be posting more about Kallout -- this is a goodie.
Well, Forestle, the eco friendly search engine that donated revenue to save rainforests, was launched last week, and got some pretty good traffic. The site, which was using Google search results, was well on its way to saving some land when...pop when the plug from Google. Shutting the site down indefinitely.
Google's Rationale: It said Forestle incented people to click on sponsored links so as to raise more money and save more land. Forestle had an alternative interpretation:
Dear Forestle user,
We just received an email from Google in which they announced the end of the partnership with Forestle. They said that we offered "incentives to click artificially on sponsored links" and that this was not compliant with their policies..
Well, we don't agree with that!
We displayed a note at the top of the Forestle result page that says "only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in them". Also we saved 0.1 m² per search and not per click! So where did we offer incentives to click on ads?
In our opinion Google ended the partnership, because Forestle became too successful: Yesterday we earned almost 200 USD and saved more than 4,000 square meters of rainforest!
We will try to reactivate Forestle and clarify this issue. Meanwhile, we ask you to use our eco-friendly search engine www.Znout.com. Znout does not save rainforest, but it reduces your energy consumption thanks to black backgrounds and EcoServers considerably.
We will inform you with a message on www.Znout.com, when we are able to revive Forestle. So please make Znout your home page or install the Znout plugin for your browser.
Hmm. Lemme tell ya, if I were in charge of YAHOO search...
The Pew Internet and American Life Project is wonderful. They do a TON of research on the medium asking questions we want and need to know the answers to. While they don't generally make projections, which makes it a far less popular data source with companies trying to get venture or whatnot, their data provide a valuable service to our industry and our nation.
Yes, all that is sincere.
The study I want to talk about today relates to search, who is using it and how.
Almost half of the online pop is using search daily. The only thing used more is email:
As one might expect, search use correlates with education, income, and youth:
They postulate why people are using search more now, but to get that you'll have to visit their site. In any case, this is just another example of their excellent data.
