Don’t Be Evil

Life just got better. At the end of last week, Google announced that its personalised search had now become available to ‘signed-out’ users.

What does that mean?

Well, personalised search means that Google uses its history of what you have searched for before to provide more relevant results for subsequent search queries. It records everything you’ve searched for and every result you’ve clicked. This allows it to profile you and produce results that are more likely to be about what you’re interested in. If you live in Birmingham, UK, for example, and often click on results for places in that city, then you’ll be less likely to get results relating to Birmingham, Alabama.

Signed-out users are people who don’t log into a Google account prior to conducting a search. That would include people who haven’t opted in to have their search results saved. This is done through a cookie file saved on your computer. Unless your Internet privacy settings are set very high, this will happen without you noticing.

So, whoever you are, your search history is saved and analysed. Without your permission.

In a similar vein, the rollout of real-time search means that Twitter comments are instantly catalogued. And don’t worry – you don’t need to change any account settings or opt-in to anything. They’re doing it anyway. There really is no ‘undo’ button on the web.

Any lily-livered liberals clinging to outmoded ideas like a right to privacy need to move on. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC last week:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t. Or maybe I just don’t think it’s any of your business. Or that you should ask me first.

Oh wait – you are allowed to delete your history and opt out. But you’ll need to explicitly opt-out of survei personalisation on every computer you use.

I really wish Bing produced better results.

Postscript: I notice Alan beat me to the punch on this and is typically incisive.

Microo?

So Microsoft has tendered a bid to buy Yahoo! for $44.6bn.

I understand that Microsoft has to do something to build on its web strategy/presence. No-one uses Live Search, Live Spaces, or any of the rest. (OK. About one percent of people do). To build up any future trade for advertising, web services or development platforms, they have to increase market share.

I understand that Yahoo! has to do something. Their share of the search market is pitiful compared to the almighty Google. Their share of the search marketing budget is about 20% compared to Google’s 70%. And they’d just been forced to lay off a load of staff.

So if they combine forces, they end up with a market competitor?

I don’t think so.

Microsoft’s problem and Yahoo!’s has been that they have not been able to identify what they do well. Microsoft used to do operating systems and business productivity software. They were quite good at that. YMMV.

Yahoo! used to have this great directory of editor-approved, quality websites. Then they diversified. They tried to make yahoo.com all things to all wo/men. That failed disastrously because there’s no such thing. They brought on some cool people and acquired a load of cool sites like del.icio.us, flickr and upcoming. But still it didn’t work for them because advertisers don’t buy cool; they buy results. Yahoo! announced 1400 job losses just last week.

Why didn’t it work and why isn’t MS able to make any inroads on the web?

Because neither of them have a core value proposition when it comes to the web. You couldn’t sum up what either of them do on the web in one sentence. If a business can’t do that, then they are in trouble, normally.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bits within both companies’ web presence that have considerable value. Flickr is a cool photo site. Microsoft’s technet is actually very good, IMHO. Live Spaces is arguably a much better platform than Blogger or Vox.

However, for end-users, if you want good search, go to Google. For businesses, if you want SEM, go to Google. What exactly would you willingly go to a Yahoo or MS website for?

Microo! doesn’t appear to me to provide a compelling alternative to any of that.

Glue, Web 2.0 and the Next Google

If you were a brand manager for an FMCG company – let’s say you look after Bostik, for the sake of argument – what would you be doing when it comes to your online strategy?

Well, you’d probably try to work out how Google works. You want to come top of the search results for things like err.. ‘glue’. You’d probably also want to come at the top or near the top for things like ‘DIY products’ and ‘craft supplies’. You can’t just buy your way to the top – well, you can, but it would be better to be returning top positions in the organic results as well as sponsored positions.

How would you do that? Well, you’d go about making sure that the Bostik site was the best site on the web when it comes to glue. You’d have sections on the history of glue, glue tips and tricks, glue industry news, glue formulae, learned articles on the future of adhesives. It’ll take a little resource, but hey, you’re a brand – part of the Total group in this case – you aren’t short of a few bob. Plus, if you get it right, you’ll be saving a packet on advertising. Depending on your marketplace, you might not have to go overboard here – you just need more, better stuff than those bastards at Copydex.

You’d also get into this whole Web 2.0 thing. It’ll help you generate more content and get linked to. Pay someone to write the best glue blog on the planet for you. Get some message boards on the go about DIY, handicrafts and other glue issues. You’ll get a widget put together – maybe it gives you a DIY tip every day or something. You’ll provide RSS feeds for all your content so it can travel as far as possible.

Google loves all this stuff – pretty soon, you’ll be ranking for as many glue, DIY and handicrafting terms as you’d care to mention. And it’s all relatively easy.

Most brands aren’t currently doing this stuff. That’s because corporations are slow-moving and stupid, not to mention psychotic. Most brands behave like toddlers screaming for attention at the moment; the brands of the future will behave like best mates and learned counsellors – people you actually want to have a relationship with.

They will come round eventually – it’s common sense. If you are a brand you will sooner or later be working as hard as possible to either create or acquire the definitive site on the Internet when it comes to your subject matter.

Anything wrong with this? In some senses, it’s great. Google is rehabilitating corporations in some senses – forcing them to offer stuff that’s useful and interesting rather than the old raping and pillaging shenanigans they used to do.

Well, it’s great if you work in advertising or marketing (hey, kill yourself). Not so much if you are a citizen of the world. Brands are still psychotic underneath, you see. They are being rehabilitated in the same sense that a mass murderer growing flowers in the prison garden is rehabilitated. You know exactly what they’d really like to do with those shears. The problem is brands have been given the means to take control of the message once again, if only they had the sense to realise it.

They don’t want you to consider their competitors; they don’t want you thinking about buying nails instead of glue; they don’t want you to know about the Marvin Medium massacre of ‘37. And it will only take them a very little time and resource to achieve it. And remember, they’re brands – their resources and energy are pretty much limitless. Particularly compared to you, Mister competitor Glue Blogger. They’ll buy you up and shut you down in an instant. Here’s a real example – a search for Mattel Toy Recall takes you straight their consumer relations page as the top result. Potentially more vital information about the results of lead poisoning in young children appear half way down the page, where nobody clicks.

So the next Google. Not only will it be better at searching – we’re only impressed by the current Google because the competition is so absolutely dismal. It will also be about expressing diversity rather than hierarchy. About delivering the truth in all its facets rather than the definitive answer. It won’t produce a list; it will produce a crystal.

Lil’ Big Man

Heather Hopkins posts on the rise of UK rocker Lil’ Chris (the short kid in the second series of Rock School, UK TV viewers) from a search engine perspective and showing the impact of social networks. The graph really says it all:

There’s little to add to Heather’s excellent post, which I just wanted to draw attention to. It’s a great example of social networks propelling someone from zero to hero. As she says, the search engine traffic didn’t really start until he’d become a phenomenon on MySpace and Bebo. Early on, these sites apparently counted for 64% of the upstream traffic to the Lil’ Chris site.

It is interesting how social network traffic (brown line) has tailed off as search traffic has increased (green line). The reasons for this will be familiar to anyone who went to school. Once a cult phenomenon goes mainstream then it seems it just isn’t cool for cats any more. Let’s hope that the recent dip in searches will have been curtailed by the release of his shot at Christmas No. 1, Gettin’ Enough last week. (YouTube Link. Chris seems to have forsaken Gene Simmons for Pete Shelley and/or Feargal Sharkey nowadays. Good move.)

Seeking Answers

Google Answers has been closed while Yahoo! Answers goes from strength to strength. The key difference between the two is that Google’s service paid vetted ‘experts’ to produce results, while Yahoo allows anyone to pitch in. The whole thing leaves a lot of questions.

I’m not sure whether the stats prove an uncomplicated victory for social search and crowdsourced problem-solving, for a start. I’ve really no idea which service produces better answers, being one issue. It probably depends on the question. ‘What’s a good Italian restaurant in Cardiff?’ will work well with the Yahoo! model because it has a wider reach. On the other hand, you might not want to trust folk wisdom for a solution to matters that require a specialised knowledge.

It does show that a free-for-all, give-and-take knowledge source is very addictive and, presumably, helpful enough. Involving people like Stephen Hawking and Oprah Winfrey bought Yahoo! a vital share of attention Google never bothered with. Also, as Brady Forrest points out, Yahoo!’s model could scale organically, while Google’s required the recruitment and vetting of answerers, a time-consuming and distracting business.

Is this victory analagous to what will happen in the battle between the Wikipedia and the Britannica? It seems very similar on face value. Not entirely, though, since their business models are different: Wikipedia survives on charitable donations and drubbing the opposition when it comes to traffic is not nearly as helpful as it has been to Yahoo!

[I interviewed Steven Taylor, RVP of Yahoo! UK here, back in August and he talked a little about the Answers service]

Betting on Search

My post on Saturday about prediction markets being a useful way to access collective intelligence brought a response from Gary of Tall Street. Tall Street is a new search engine which operates a form of stock market on search results. You search for and add sites to the system and invest pretend money in the sites you like or own. If other users click sites you’ve invested in, your stock increases in price.

They haven’t been Techcrunched or boingboing’ed as yet so the number of sites in the system is low, which limits the utility of the service. However, a search for ‘Search Engines’ has been pre-populated. It would be useful if there were a way to seed the system with results from another service. I also think real money would be an interesting addition. As it is, only the ongoing addition and betting on sites by sufficient users will reveal whether the model actually works. But I have to say.. it looks good on paper. Would I invest real money in Tall Street? No. But then I’m not an investor on the lookout for innovative new ideas.

Yes, it’s just another student project, and it looks a bit rough. But haven’t we seen something fitting that description before…?

Gary was also good enough to answer a few questions for me:

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