Organic Response

My first reaction: Cool, someone found my white paper.

Second reaction: Al Jazeera?… what tha?

Third reaction: This could be cool, but these questions are rather biased.  What are they reaching for? Will I be misrepresented?

Needless to say, I had mixed emotions, but I got the backing of my agency to represent them, so I went for it.  I did, however, alter some of the questions and avoid others for fear of Al Jazeera taking what I say out of context.  Without further ado, here are my questions and answers:

1)     Starting at a very basic level here, could you name the top three web search engines currently and what makes them so popular?

• Currently the top three search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN; in that order.  The reason for their popularity is that they have been able to produce the most relevant search results on the most extensive number of topics.  The majority of people searching the internet want to find what they are looking for in the least amount of steps, and for the average user, these major search engines fulfil that function.   

2)     How have these search engines developed such a dominance over how net users access information?

• The ability to index the massive amounts of content on the Web and collect it in one location has proven to be enough to draw millions of internet users. 
• When these search engines were first established they primarily ranked web pages based on the on-page content.  Eventually the use of link analysis allowed for the improvement of relevancy in the search results. 
• Fairly recent developments regarding new social aspects of the Web are allowing the major search engines to evolve in order to meet the needs of an increasingly involved, web savvy, internet population.  

3)      Could you tell us some of the flaws of the major search engines?

• One of the biggest flaws among these search engines exist in Yahoo’s natural results.  They offer a paid inclusion program to their natural listings which allows advertisers to pay for higher rankings.  This creates a bias towards commercial websites. 
• It has also been speculated that for competitive search queries some of Yahoo’s top search results are hand coded because of their algorithm’s inability to weed out spammers.
• People seem to want to find flaws with the search powerhouse Google, however the only bias I can detect is their skew towards informational resources, which could hardly be considered a flaw.
• In reality Google’s algorithms are much better than any other search engine at filtering out spammers and other unnatural results.  

4)     Can you talk us through a comparative search on Google and one of the newer/different search engines?

• Recently, human edited search engines, such as Mahalo and Cha-Cha, are claiming to provide a more concise easy to navigate search experience.  While these engines may provide clear results to many competitive search queries, they fall short as a result of their inability to return results on long-tail keyword queries.
• Search behaviour follows the long-tail rule of statistics, which means that the majority of people are using several keywords in their queries.  A human edited search engine will never be better equipped than Google when it comes to indexing enough web content to accommodate long-tail search behaviour.

5)     What is social searching?

• Social searching is the human highlighting of content, by tagging with descriptive labels, in order for like minded people to find what they are looking for.  It can also involve a user voting process that allows more popular content to rank higher.

6)     How will social searching make a difference?

• Social searching has made a difference in how many people search in the web, however it will not have an effect on a mass scale until the major search engines begin to adapt the social methodology. 
• No matter how many people get involved with bookmarking, tagging and voting the web is simply growing too quickly for humans to keep up with it.

7)     What does social search mean in terms of challenging Google’s search techniques?

• Google has certainly taken notice of the popularity and effectiveness of social search.  Their most recent update, called Google Universal, is in many ways a response to the new social aspect of the net. By incorporating vertical searches on blogs, video, images, news, and books into their main results, they are answering the call of people who are finding this information on social sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Digg.

     How will Google continue to evolve to meet the social needs of internet users?

• I believe that Google’s Customized Search Engines represent the future of this search powerhouse.  By allowing users access to their search technology, Google has created a platform for users to create their own niche search engines. 
• Similar to their recent inclusion of verticals with Google Universal, over time these user generated search engines will be incorporated into the main search results.
• Google will become, in a sense, an aggregator of smaller user influenced search engines.  

9)     Why have developments and innovations in search technique started booming now?

• In recent years the internet has become an environment of participation and collaboration.  Through the use of blogs, videoblogs and wikis users are creating new content at a faster pace than ever before.  This new interaction is demanding better ways to search for information.   

I was contacted by the assistant producer of an online program called The Listening Post; episodes air on YouTube.  The Listening Post is produced by Aljazeers UK.  The woman had found my white  paper (SEO in the Web2.0 Era: The Evolution of Search Engine Optimization) while doing research on the internet, and was looking for an SEO’s perspective on the big search engines and their dissemination of information.  She wanted me to make a video recording of myself answering a series of questions.  Below are the questions she sent over:

1. Starting at a very basic level here, could you name the top three web search engines currently? What makes them so popular? The reasons need not be confined to an explanation of the search methodology used…any other reasons that you think have contributed can also be stated.
2. Much is said about how the behemoth search engines have developed a monopoly over information and have undue influence over how net users access information. Could you explain how this happens? An example or two that illustrates the monopoly over information developed by big search engines would help.
3. The search engines you mentioned may be the most popular on the web, but could you tell us what their flaws are in terms of what information they keep from us and the unwanted information they push at us? (If you could talk us through a comparative search on google and one of the newer/different search engines, indicating what information comes up and what doesn’t, it would make things clearer.)
4. There must be certain bits of information that search mammoths like google don’t reveal in their search results. Are these omissions purely a result of their search algorithm or are there other, more editorially thought out factors behind this?
5. Google used to be seen as above the politicking and manipulation of big media corporations. The site was seen as a geek bastion. Has it gone soft now? Were they ever above the tactics used by big media houses? Have they succumbed?
6. Name some of the new search engines being developed currently and explain how they aim to improve on the web search techniques currently being employed by the big search engines.
7. What do these innovations mean in terms of challenging not just google’s market monopoly but its search technique itself?
8. What will these new search engines mean for users of the net? How will it change the way in which they access information.
9. Is the quest for an alternative search engine to google a question of freedom of information?
10. Why have developments and innovations in search technique started booming now? How come it’s taken so long for these developments to come about? Was something holding them up?
11. What is social searching? How will it make a difference?