This is a short entry because it's very late, I'm very tired, and I still have tons of unread email...
In thinking about Google's future competitively and how they might eventually fall by the wayside, I always bring up the single example of a site I consistently use to find better content than what's available through Google's SERPs. Granted, this engine doesn't operate perfectly for every query (not even close), but for me, it's become a search destination when I know the regular engines can't acceptably fulfill my needs.
Have a look at some comparative searches:
- Furniture vs. at Google
- Luggage vs. at Google
- Laptops vs. at Google
- SEO vs. at Google
- Web Design vs. at Google
- Politics vs. at Google
- Shoes vs. at Google
- Web 2.0 vs. at Google
- Blogging vs. at Google
- Writing vs. at Google
Yeah, I'm talking about the popular tag pages at Del.icio.us. If you look through the results above you'll see some serious patterns. Del.icio.us is:
- More timely
- More focused on what someone in my demographic might want
- Offers more high quality results
- Provides a greater variety of results (in scope)
- Doesn't always list the "best" results first
- Has some accuracy and relevance problems
- Is either 10X better or 10X worse than Google depending on what you're looking for
I think that if Googlers are looking for a threat to their dominance over the web experience, they should start with Del.icio.us. Likewise, if intelligent entrepreneurs are truly seeking a way to compete with the search giant, this is the route they should take. If Yahoo! focused some serious resources here and extended their ownership to places like Digg, Reddit & StumbleUpon, I believe they could build a social-relevance based engine that would show some pretty fantastic content.
BTW - On an unrelated topic - you need to read How to Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M from Andy Hagans. Genius post and very smart advice, even if you don't have any desire to build an affiliate site.
I like Del.icio.us a lot, but for the search you mentioned first (furniture), Google returns Ikea, Thomasville, Rooms to Go, etc. and I think many people would find those helpful. The #1 result on del.icio.us showed couches made out of grass:
https://www.stlloftstyle.com/modern-furniture/
Don't get me wrong; that's a really interesting page. But if someone were looking for that, I would think that they'd do the search [grass couch], and if they did that on Google, we'd give them this url:
https://readymademag.com/feature_6_sodcouch.php
which is in fact the original source of that picture; the #1 del.icio.us result just copied the pictures from ReadyMade magazine, so it's not the authoritative source.
One of the first things we try to instill at Google is "you are not a typical search engine user." It's important to support bloggers, SEOs, and other power users, but a typical user typing in furniture probably wants those high-quality examples of furniture sites. If they really wanted something different (grass couches), then we try to be speedy so that it's very easy to refine your query. That's also why we include query refinements at the bottom of the "furniture" query, because users might want to look for different aspects of furniture.
roadies, about the superman cape: we do try to balance general interest with fresh events. Most people typing [superman cape] probably want pictures (which we give) or general web results. But I see the "Google sends user a superman cape" in Google's results at #8. Regarding other bigger, more significant topical events, Google has gotten better at doing things like including news results in search results. For example, a query like [hd dvd] shows news articles about the HD DVD/Digg brouhaha within the search results.
Matt,
I have to give you props for jumping in on any conversations where Google's reputation is in question. I know it's your job, but I also can see that it is a daunting and never ending chore. I hope you enjoy your upcoming and much needed vacation and hope to catch up with you next month in Seattle for a few minutes.
I agree that the results returned for "superman cape" are pertinent to what the typical searcher is most likely looking for. I also know that I'm not a typical search user either. My search would have most likely started with "google superman cape" or "blogger superman cape" and longtailed from there if the results didn't look right at first. Also, the timeliness of these types of searches are usually the same day or very close the actual day the event happened. I notice the main index usually takes 2-3 days to pick up on these smaller stories which isn't too bad. However, your example for the Digg/HD-DVD coverup is quite insightful as today is only day 2 of that event.
Regarding my examples above, I often use social sites to search for recent stories that aren't current affairs or world news. One source I have yet to utilize is Google's Blog Search, mostly because I've already adopted the other models and made them habitual. When searching for "superman cape" on Blog Search, the original story is returned as the first result and is spot on. It would be cool if my personalized SERPs could display Blog Search result headlines on the side or through a CO-OP set (Is there a customized blog search co-op? I haven't checked, but am now looking...).
Way to stimulate conversation again Rand. Matt - I think your view corresponds broadly with Andy's above and it's easy to forget that we are not your average searcher (until you do some keyword research, of course and remember the crazy things people search for).
Incidentally, while we're talking about furniture - here are some interesting results for you: the search for sofa on google.co.uk is very different to the search for sofas, and both are very different to the search for sofa on google.com. I guess most Americans would search for 'couch' rather than 'sofa' which explains much of the difference between .co.uk and .com but interestingly the top result on google.com is sofa.com - a UK-based sofa retailer (disclaimer: who we are doing some work with) - who currently appear quite a lot further down the search on google.co.uk
Matt - I think you're right about Del.icio.us not really being a search engine... Maybe it's more of a discovery engine? It brings back things in a general sector that I tend to enjoy and have interest in, but if I searched del.icio.us for green grass couches, I probably wouldn't be getting the results I wanted.
While I personally love it for specific uses, I know it's not for everyone, but I do think there must be some opportunity for Google to provide a search product in that realm - more discovery-related, more viral-content heavy and less influenced by good SEO than by the engagement previous users have had (as long as those users are users like me) :)
I agree with what you are saying Matt.
When I go to delicious I am not looking for the most relevant site for the query... instead I am looking for what the average Joe has bookmarked as being fun or interesting or whatever. Very different stuff from what the Google algo returns.
I don't go to delicious thinking that the first result is the most relevant... instead I gauge by title and number of bookmarks. When I go there I am VERY interested in the subject and compare it to when I have spent enjoyable time in a bookstore.
The bookstore has a serendipity that is different from the SERPs.
If the folks at Google opened a new search channel that utilized bookmarks that the average Joe creates I think that I would use it a lot. Average Joe is motivated by interesting, fun, cool, wow.... webmasters are on a different channel in what they promote and link to - at least that's how I perceive it.
Think about how your search results would compare to what I would find at the bookstore... would the titles at the bookstore rank differently that what I see in the SERPs?
I agree with you too Matt. It's easy at times for all of us to forget we're not typical searches and that we see relevancy and irrelevancy where the average user won't.
I can see social media search operating more as a vertical search engine. I know I don't bookmark just any old page at del.icio.us. It's generally going to be something much more in depth that I'm pretty sure I'll want to refer back to. A result like that is probably good for someone who knows something about the subject, but not so much for the causal searcher.
I like Rand's idea of a discovery engine and I use del.icio.us that way though not through search. I'll discover pages through friends I might follow. Pick people who you trust to find information with different specialties and you can discover quite a bit of useful pages.
randfish, I completely agree with your comment; del.icio.us presents a different view of the web that weights more toward topical/fanciful, and the results are often fascinating. I believe that a good search engine should support multiple ways to present results (and even rank results differently) based on what we think people might want. It's true that Google leans more toward search than serendipity, but it would be nice if Google gave users ways to tilt things a little more.
roadies, no worries; I love talking about this stuff. Blogsearch has historically been the place to feel the pulse of the blogosphere, but we have started incorporating more blog answers into web results and I'd expect that trend to continue so that you can get both good reference results as well as the occasional serendipity. :)
If we keep it up, "serendipity" may become Colbert's "The Word"! :)
Thanks for the reply Matt. I'll keep a lookout for blog results while searching and look forward to any other serendipitous results you end up throwing my way in the future. Knowing the user's motivation behind each query is difficult, sure, but isn't Google omniscient yet? Oh, I see. You're working on it. :)
god only knows why Delcious doesn't work up a better interface
totally agree dcress. The Delicious interface is a total turn-off, I still get confused. It could so easily be fixed.
One of the things that bugs me the most is I want to see my tags as a tag cloud by default instead of as the long list. I've never found a way to have the tag cloud by default and have to manually change it every time I log in.
If someone knows how I'd greatly appreciate knowing too.
I'm not totally against the idea behind the del.icio.us interface. People call Reddit out for being bland, and they say the same thing about del...us, as well as complaining about its confusing aspects.
However, I've seen a lot of similar / rip-off sites try and both jazz things up and make things more simple. The end results is usually a god-awful colour-crime nightmare, or a Digg clone.
I think the key difference with del.icio.us is that the design is not just bland (bland is fine as long as it works), it's bad design and it works poorly. An obvious example is their use of purple on top of a pink background when displaying the number of people that have bookmarked a link - which makes it really difficult to read.
About a year ago I started designing a super sexy mockup of what the del.icio.us homepage -could- look like if it had some designer/usability TLC, but I never finished it. They'd probably ignore it anyway, social media sites never take my advice :)
I absolutely hate the purple on pink. It's easy enough to tell which page has been bookmarked by more people, but it's impossible to see the numbers themselves. Such an easy fix too.
Have you tried ma.gnolia, Jane? Nice bookmarking features, but with a very attractive user interface.
It's feature-rich and much more community-oriented than a lot of the competition.
It's all about the image they've had this entire time and how users interact with it. Like myspace.com and it's completely horrid interface.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree based upon the examples Rand gave. I think del.icio.us can be useful if you're looking for information/resources, but I didn't find the results to be useful for product related terms.
I do think Yahoo needs to do more with del'us in their search results, but I don't think the sample above proves one way or the other.
I often find myself going to Del.icio.us, as well as Redditt, Digg, and Wikipedia when I need to find a recently hot item fast. Usually this comes from conversations with other peers:
Me: "Did you see that Google sent some blogger a Superman cape when he had troubles with Google Maps?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Let me Google it for you...crap. It's too recent. Hang on, I'll check Del.icio.us... Ah, here's the link."
Del.icio.us is great for the big terms, but pretty poor for the long tail. Also Del.icio.us is massively open to spam, much more so than google.
I think is a combination of algorithmic and social search is the answer. For example, a google type layout with ability to “dig” results if users think the results are good, and the ability bury them if they aren’t relevant.
Read more here: https://dfinitive.com/blog/seo/is-%e2%80%9csocial-search%e2%80%9d-going-to-be-a-google-killer/
How so? When searching around for something on del.icio.us I rarely see spam, probably because the stuff I'm looking for usually isn't commercial oriented and also because the results are ranked democratically.
I agree fully stokelake!
And although del.icio.us is open to spam there seems to be little there so far. That does not mean they are immune, but for right now it can be one safe haven.
Big brother Google needs to be taken down a notch so they can remember their roots.
Now they want us to report sites that sell links? Try every major directory Google...
I kind of agree to the fact that the Google is actually trying to give search results that promoted its own properties and is slowly deviating from generic search results. It can be devastating for google in the long run.
I second (or really, "sixth") most of the comments here -- Delicious doesn't seem to work as well for specific searches / long tail queries, and Google's interface is still tops with Ask in my opinion.
I was telling someone a few weeks ago that Del.icio.us is my own personal search engine. So much so that a friend and I have built a Flex interface for Del.icio.us and shared it with their Product Team over there. We've still got some work to do - but hope to release it to everyone in a couple weeks.
I love del.icio.us, especially as an internal filing tool (how else do you keep an entire office up to date with all the great blog posts out there).
My only real problem with it comes down to its users - learn to use the notes field people! And you can change the title you know? Don't make it so hard for me to work out what stuff is really about!
And breathe out.....
When I first started with del.icio.us I was filling out the descriptions, but I admit I got lazy. A lot of the pages have titles that are descriptive enough for me, though I do try to add something when it's not.
i can usually remember the post once I see the title and I've been trying to be more consistent with my tagging, but I probably should spend a little more time though for anyone else who might come across one of my bookmarks.
Rand,
On the side, thanks for linking to Andy's post. His article was simply brilliant and very inspiring--two thumbs up!
I think calling it a discovery engine is most appropriate. Over the years I frequently turned to engines lower on the totem pole to discover sites outside the same neighborhood and I think pointing to delicious is a great suggestion. I'll keep it in mind next time I don't feel like drilling through pages to find something I need.
I am new to the diggs and del.icio.us sites and have now started using them to self-promote. The key problem with google is that they regard themselves as the judge of a sites value.
I would like to see google split the search results into page rank buckets.
So a new site doesn't have to compete against the ebays and amazons of the world. I could be number 1 result in the PR1 group, but 100000 in the total search results.
I'm liking google less and less every day.
I hope someone creates something as popular and better than google.
Thanks
I personally hate social media results mixed in with standard results, more often than not, the youtube results thrown up by google are not required (no matter how relevent the tags and subject matter are).
I looked at delicious, never used it before, but did not like all of the tags beneath the results, too clinical looking in my opinion.
Also, many here will be interested in the seo aspect of the results, not really interested in the actual searchers criteria, which is and always has been, a totally different ballgame. It is a pipedream to create a search engine that will please the SEO's of this world, unless they can all become top 5 at the same time ;-)
Currently I use bing as my preffered seach engine, a matter of choice as always.
i came across your post. We mixed Google with social bookmarking sites. We used the bookmarking sites for boosting sites and for input for our ' refinements'.
Let me know what you think of it at https://www.scoofers.com
Best regards, Jeroen
Not bad for a quickie....agree with the social aspect that is becoming more and more relevant, but some algorithm is still going to be needed to help cope with spam, inter alia. Educating users on proper use of tags will also be critical to get more consistent results.
Agreed with you rand !!
Yes I agree with you that delicious is good but we can't compare it with google search engine.
I believe that Google could incorporate to its Search Technology different type of options for search:
-Google Search (already in)
-Blog Search (already in)
-Social Search (social community preferences) from bookmarks and folksonomies
delicious is great for finding topic related content - I use it for research and general reading. It has some advantages over google, as you've pointed out. If i actually want to find something and make an online puurchase then not so sure, Google is still top trumps. I find Google simple and easy to use, delicious time consuming and...well tricky i guess..
So, are we going to see more hybrid social-media/search sites? It seems like that's what Jimmy Wales plans with his Wiki-based engine, but it's all in the details. Both Google and social media sites draw their power from the emergent properties of fairly simple mechanisms; I'm not sure if combining those will create something better.
Huh. Nice tip Rand. Particularly in the "over-seo'd" spaces - the popular/seo tag is particularly interesting. Also the web design one. Thanks.
I'm still using google for 'finding specific things' or 'finding things out' but delicious seems to be good for finding things when you don't know exactly what you are looking for in a large poorly-defined category.
I'll admit, I came late to the game and really only started using Del.icio.us over the last year as another method to keep track of information. While I go searching once in awhile, I've never really thought of using it as an alternative to the SEs, but may start just to see how things work out.
As for the bigger idea of user promoted results in the form of a search engine, that's just a matter of time. No doubt all the majors have been trying to think of a way to integrate it in but also protect it from being gamed.
It's an interesting concept to contemplate on so many levels.
On one hand, perhaps one of the best systems, especially for purchase based searches, would be one that knows everything about the users, all their demographic information, and based on all users rating sites, businesses, etc. could then use this information to present results based on like-minded individuals...
So results for one person based on the alignment of their demographics and preferences for a search could be completely different than someone else's, yet more likely to be what they are looking for... personalization meets geo and demographic targeting.
But, it begs the question, if a system like this could, over time, nearly guarantee the absolute best results for any search you would do, would you reveal all this information?
Imagine, in one search finding the best result in the top of the SERPs, and the time it would save, and then buying that camera or car or whatever with greater confidence that you would be happy.
Or would the threat to your privacy and having it possibly used against you be too great a risk?
I've been wondering when Google would start using the data in Google toolbar bookmarks to make searches more relevant. Or at least come up with a way to allow users to constrain searches to the sites that they have bookmarked. No doubt some privacy and technical issues. If pagerank is/was a representation of webmaster "votes" for a page, then bookmarks represent user votes that clearly state "I like this page and might want to return." Whereas, at this point it seems that an awful lot of inlinks just say, "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine."
Google did add a new pair of dice button to the toolbar (IE only?) that works more like StumbleUpon and is based on your search history. Not quite based on your bookmarks, but maybe something like that is coming.
It would be a nice idea.
Rand... I would not consider del.icio.us a better search engine then Google... It is great as another resource but not even close in my opinion unless you are searching for one or two word queries...
Hey Rand,
I agree with you in regards to the results Del.icio.us shows but the killer for me is the interface. I don't get why Del.icio.us can't make the results a little "cleaner".
I'm on board with you though. Those results are great and tend to be more taylored to what "I" am looking for.
It will be interesting to see if any of the big 3 learn from Del.icio.us.
ScottiSearch Media
I also have been finding it useful to use delisious, but come on Rand try to come up with a catchy title :)
cool great article.. i dont us del.icio.us to be honest, thats becuase the crappy design :P haha hyeah im a designer..
Hmm, haven't thought of del.icio.us as a search engine but that is interresting to hear. It makes a lot of sense.
About Andy's How to Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M. I read it and it is awsome. It is very informative and very helpful. I picked up a lot of information that I can use with my sites. Everyone should read it.
I find myself going to delicious more and more as a research destination. It works great for generic searches. However, google is still better for very specific searches.
I would use delicious even more if they had some sorting features for the search results, displayed a URL, and were a little faster in delivery.
Great reality-based article at Tropical SEO. Thanks for pointing to it.
Google has nothing to worry about anymore. They are the Kleenex of search engines and nothing will change that.
Watch me take my time machine back to 1996:
Matt, can that time machine go forward too? I have some investment ideas, but I wouldn't mind seeing how things are going to turn out before I spend my money.
I knew the Yahoo comment would come right away. :)
I won't for a moment underestimate Google, and all credit to them for what they've accomplished, but it amazes me when we talk about a company that's less than a decade old as if they've always been around and always will be. The world's moving fast, and Google has as much to worry about as any big business.
Totally agree Rand - I've been using del.icio.us popular feeds in Netvibes for a while now to keep track of different topics that I blog about.
As you say, it's timely and it's user-submitted, so it provides the power of human recommendation over SERPs that don't necessarily offer the best result - especially given that the window of opportunity is apparently closing...
I like using google and delicius too, but it depends of what you are looking for. Sometimes if you know that you want to go to wikipedia or youtube or delicious.... it is always faster if you use
www.asieragos.es/english.html
you can search in google, delicious, youtube, wikipedia, yahoo, cuil, mp3gle, songza.... and much more pages in separated tabs and them compare your results. It is the best home page that i know.
if you try it, you'll love it!
Interesting article and l like the argument you have presented. My take on it is the fact that it is a arms race and Google are in my Humble opinion, leading this race (at the moment anyway). My additino to this article and comments would be the fact that Google are initiating the next stage of their results ability... Google "Web History" (https://www.google.com/history/). This in itself will help users to find what they are looking for with even more precision than what already exists.
At the end of the day, Google still leads this market, and as long as it listens to it's user base and follows the trends on the internet to keep pushing it's serach capabilities forward then the world will stay happy.
Regards,
Luke Humble
www.lukehumble.com