Sophisticated Online Searchers? Nope. Fewer.
June 18, 2012
TechCrunch published “Hitwise: Google US Search Share Down 5% In The Last Year; Bing, Yahoo Gained.” Check it out. We are less interested in the Google market share than the average goose. However, within the article was a table with some hefty data freight.
Here at the goose pond we hear from many folks, “I am a really good online researchers.” We find this amusing because about two thirds of the ArnoldIT team have degrees in library and information science. We have a handful of people with excellent research skills honed after years of wandering through the stacks of the Harrod’s Creek library with its collection of 37 volumes.
Here’s the table with a happy quack to TechCrunch and the ever reliable Experian Hitwise:
A happy quack to the ever reliable Experian Hitwise.
The key datum is the percentage of alleged Web search users who bag in a single term and take what the objective, relevance centric Web search vendors shovel out: 29.93 percent use single term queries. Call it 30 percent. How many of these expert searchers can identify disinformation? How many know how to determine the provenance of the source? How many spend time to double check the “facts” like the ones in this ever reliable Experian Hitwise table?
Another interesting point is that about 15 percent of the May 2012 users employ five or more terms. I am somewhat encouraged but that percentage is decreasing from the May 2011 figures. Bummer.
My view:
- As education erodes, the ability to figure out or even know how to sort out the goose feathers from the giblets will not be a growing asset.
- Based on my limited and skewed sample, MBAs and their ilk have little appetite to dig for information and check facts. The talk about data outweighs the actual value of meaningful factoids. I wish I could get paid by the fluff, an official unit of baloney.
- Has anyone thought about the political power of a Web search system which filters, shapes, and outputs information to one third of its customers? I do which is one reason why I am delighted to be an old, addled goose.
Yep, great data. I wonder if they are accurate. Hope not.
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
ArnoldIT Starts Free Information Service. Honk!
June 18, 2012
January was a cruel month. Now it is June and the ice has melted and the grass is green for a short time. At the ArnoldIT editorial meeting on June 14, 2012, the bright but feisty team suggested that we should try something new with our flow of more than 800 stories a month. So starting today (June 18, 2012) we are starting a test of Honk, an opt in, free restricted distribution newsletter. Key point: Free. Another key point: A test.
What will the opt in ArnoldIT newsletter contain?
We will be sending out one original and quite opinionated story plus links to six or seven supporting or complementary stories each week. Today’s test issue take a hard look at predictive methods for search and content processing. Instead of dancing around a company’s misstep, the content in the registration-required newsletter names the company. We hope that each newsletter provides the equivalent of a page in a college notebook about a specific topic.
If the feedback about the restricted distribution newsletter is positive, we want to expand the content coverage, run some ads, and use the newsletter for inclusions; that is, special content tailored to our opt in readers.
The logo for the free, weekly opt in newsletter from Stephen E Arnold
To get the free newsletter off the ground, here’s the deal. Write thehonk@yandex.com. Just tell us that you want to receive the email newsletter. You will start getting it each Monday. You can opt out at any time. As a shameless inducement, anyone who signs up in the next week will receive a free copy of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. Info about the monograph is here. The book was published in 2011 by Pandia in Norway which has shifted its business from information toward more exciting venues. Therefore, the rights are mine, and you can get a free monograph in exchange for your request to receive our new newsletter.
Just so you know what ideas the team generated are, let me highlight a few of the suggestions:
- We build our own email list. We have worked on building a search, content processing, and analytics mailing list for two publishers and several clients in the last four years. None of those outfits is still in business and we don’t have the names we acquired.
- We want to experiment with different types of content, including sponsored content. (I am not sure how this will work, but there are 20 ArnoldIT goslings who want to experiment.)
- We get requests to advertise on Beyond Search, but we have finite space. We will try to put some ads in the newsletter. Some will be gratis; others will we hope paid for by some wise advertiser.
- The newsletter may be killed because no one cares. My team and I are okay with that outcome.
We have assigned one of our content specialists to the project. Her name is Jennifer Shockley, and she will be monitoring the email at thehonk@yandex.com along with Don Anderson, the engineer who is fiddling with the email publishing systems we are testing.
The original content in the newsletter is copyrighted and may not be reused without written permission. The content on my Web site and the blogs have different terms of use.
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2012
Blekko Removes Most Popular Websites From Search Results
June 12, 2012
The Blekko Blog recently reported on a new experimental search engine called Millionshort.com that removes the most popular websites from search results in the article “Searching Without PageRank.”
The way that Million Short helps users navigate web results more easily, is by removing the top sites (be it million, thousand or hundred) from search results. The theory behind this is that often when you type keywords into a search engine, you always get the same results. This allows other websites that may not have mastered Google’s page ranking algorithm to be seen.
Blekko also has a search feature that is similar to this. The article states:
“Blekko’s search engine has a feature called slashtags, which can be used to either restrict a search to a list of websites, or remove that list of websites from the results. We typically use this feature for human curation, for example, picking out the best health websites. Hm, I thought, what an interesting hack! I’ll take that list of the most popular websites, and make slashtags which can be used to either search or exclude the most popular 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, or 100,000 websites. Our current effective limit to slashtag size is 100,000 websites, so I couldn’t do the most popular 1,000,000 sites.”
Blekko and Million Short are taking interesting steps to create more of a discovery search engine by allowing websites that may be new or have poor SEO and small marketing budgets to rise to the top.
Jasmine Ashton, June 12, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Walled Garden Update: The Era of Proprietary Browsers
June 8, 2012
Hear ye! Hear ye!! A new era of proprietary browsing is fast approaching! The article Yahoo’s Axis Brings Shared Visual Search Results to iOS and Browsers heralds the coming of Axis visual search application better than a professional crier paid in gold. If Yahoo’s Axis surprised us all by toppling the proprietary ruling class, the gold would go to them.
According to the author:
“Yahoo’s Axis visual search app and browser extension replaces text-based search results with visual representations of pages. The results appear in a carousel similar to Apple’s Cover Flow navigation in OS X, and can be synced between multiple devices on the same account. For example, a search that begins on an iPhone can be continued on a Windows computer with the Axis browser extension installed. “
At times, searching the web can be tiresome, in particular when doing video related search. You utilize key words hoping to be a click away from the scene or page you seek, but it doesn’t always work that way. Results vary according to browser and research methods.
The future is visual, but how does visual work with concepts? Initially, IE took the crown, and has comfortably sat on the throne ever since. However, with the era of proprietary browsers fast approaching, a challenger could arise. Moving across the board we have Axis, strategizing his next move towards the Crown.
Jennifer Shockley, June 8, 2012
Changes at the Top for Cuadra
May 29, 2012
Information management firm and SydneyPLUS affiliate Cuadra is going through a bit of a shake-up. The company announced that, after thirty-four years, its founders are leaving for new adventures. Company President Dr. Carlos A. Cuadra and CFO Gloria N. Cuadra will be enjoying retirement, while Executive VP Judith Wanger’s next undertaking is still under wraps. Now in charge of Cuadra’s management team is Phil Green, head of The Inmagic division of SydneyPLUS.
The press release states:
“Dr. Cuadra and Ms. Wanger formed Cuadra Associates in 1978 to develop STAR software and a suite of STAR-based knowledge management solutions. STAR, which is used worldwide in archives, libraries, museums, and publishing firms, has earned widespread recognition for excellence.
“Mr. Green has been working with Cuadra staff to ensure a smooth transition. ‘I’ve been impressed with the Cuadra staff, the Cuadra product line, and the plans for the future. We will
move forward with products and services that continue Cuadra’s tradition for quality and integrity,’ he said.”
Cuadra is proud to produce ready-to-use knowledge management tools for archives, museum and photographic collections, market intelligence, library automation, publishing, records management, and vocabulary control. They boast that their STAR is the most flexible and comprehensive system in the field, and in 2003 the company introduced a SaaS version. Cuadra’s headquarters are in Los Angeles, CA; the company also has offices in Silver Spring, MD, and New York, NY.
Cynthia Murrell, May 29, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Scoop: Is It a Surprise That Google and Microsoft Target Amazon?
May 22, 2012
Okay, “real” journalists are causing my blood pressure medicine to work overtime. I did not know that Amazon was a big deal. I am delighted that a major “real” news outfit reported for the first time in the history of mankind this insight: “Scoop: Google, Microsoft Both Targeting Amazon with New Clouds.” The insight which knocked me on my tail feathers was:
Google and Microsoft are two cloud providers that should have Amazon Web Services shaking a bit, in a way Rackspace and the OpenStack haven’t yet been able to. Google and Microsoft both have the engineering chops to compete with AWS technically, and both have lots of experience dealing with both developers and large companies. More importantly, both seem willing and able to compete with AWS on price — a big advantage for AWS right now as its economies of scale allow it to regularly slash prices for its cloud computing services.
Even though we have provided some insight to our hopeless befuddled investment bank clients, we totally missed the fact that Amazon had a cloud service, that Google and Microsoft seem to be playing a me too game, and that Amazon is rolling out new services.
How could the goslings have failed me? We thought Amazon was really a purveyor of hard backed books and diapers? I expect that the financial outfits who pay us to analyze the more subtle aspects of companies engaged in online will be firing us in the next minute or two. Now I know my IQ is below 70, not even “dull normal.”
I suppose I can become a WalMart greeter.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2012
Sponsored by no one. I mean who would pay money to an outfit who did not know that Google and Microsoft were interested in cloud revenue.
Business Lessons from the Yahoo Stumbles
May 18, 2012
An amazing insider view of Yahoo’s path to self-destruction was recently published on InformationWeek’s site. The article, “Three Lessons from Yahoo’s Meltdown, From an Insider,” is a business school case study gold mine and offers insights on what caused the big company’s setbacks.
The article, written by a former Yahoo exec who was laid off, gives three important lessons in business: “Don’t deny your strengths—even when others do,” “Beware belonging to a club,” and “When it’s no longer time to persevere, don’t.” The article expands on the statements:
“You have to work hard to identify your competencies, especially those that differentiate you from others. You have to brutally honest about yourself, your team, and your organization: You can’t allow others to define you, especially if they work in a nearby segment or industry. Never get too insular, but look instead to other industries, companies, or regions outside your own neighborhood.
And when staying the course isn’t working after a decent interval, admit it.”
These simple lessons leave much for CEOs and board members to take away, as well as small tech startups. Beware of the path Yahoo has taken and do not forget the business school basics.
Andrea Hayden, May 18, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
AOL Mistakes Outlined in Painful Detail
May 15, 2012
Starboard Value, who owns over 5% of AOL‘s stock, has some constructive criticism of the company and its CEO Tim Armstrong. Business Insider shares Starboard’s excellent analysis, helpfully annotated by reporter Jay Yarow, in “Huge AOL Shareholder: Here’s Everything Tim Armstrong is Doing Wrong.”
This is a very thorough, data-laden 43 slides that begins with who Starboard is, why it is involved with AOL, and why it is concerned. The core problem: display advertising losses. The first mistake the slideshow emphasizes is AOL’s plethora of brands and sales reps. The Huffington Post‘s tumble from profitability since AOL bought it features prominently here.
The biggest criticism, however, is reserved for Patch, AOL’s collection of local Web sites. This division, the presentation asserts, is responsible for the lion’s share of display ad losses. Starboard lays out the reasons they feel Patch is irredeemable:
“*Patch is a high cost business model that is not scalable.
*Local advertisers want direct response ads that have an attractive measurable ROI, which we believe Patch ads do not provide.
*National advertisers do not appear to value hyper-local advertising any more than they value broad-based display advertising because there is no evidence that proves it is more effective.
* As a result, we believe that the vast majority of Patch ad slots are filled with remnant AOL ad inventory, which could be used on any other AOL property.
* Even if Patch were to achieve its targeted revenue model, the business would still be highly unprofitable on its current cost structure.”
The presentation elaborates on each of these points, then follows up by insisting AOL take action on Patch and on display losses in general. Naturally, they also insist that the election of their nominees to the Board will help the situation.
There is much, much more information in the slideshow. Starboard Value is an investment company that focuses on helping to boost underperforming companies. They pride themselves on operating from a deep understanding businesses and markets. Created in 2001 through a spin-off from Ramius LLC, the company makes its home in New York.
Cynthia Murrell, May 15, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Carnegie Mellon Finds Crowdsourcing Can Aid Productivity
May 14, 2012
ScienceDaily reports on research from Carnegie Mellon University in “Picking the Brains of Strangers Helps Make Sense of Online Information.” The study found that building on the work of others does, in fact, improve the quality of one’s own work. That concept has been around at least since ancient Greece, but crowdsourcing on the Web brings it to a new level. Aniket Kittur, assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, is quoted as saying:
“Collectively, people spend more than 70 billion hours a year trying to make sense of information they have gathered online. Yet in most cases, when someone finishes a project, that work is essentially lost, benefitting no one else and perhaps even being forgotten by that person. If we could somehow share those efforts, however, all of us might learn faster.”
Wasted effort is certainly something to be avoided, especially in today’s culture. The study had subjects (Microsoft employees, in fact) make knowledge maps of certain online information. Sometimes they had to create the map from scratch, sometimes work with one that someone else had made, and sometimes with one that four people had worked on previously. It should be no surprise that those who got a head start through the work of others produced higher quality work.
See the write up for more specifics from the study, including observations on eye movements and forming mental models. Very informative.
Crowdsourcing is a wonderful tool—when it makes sense. We remain on the fence about asking crowds for information about brain surgery. Seems imprudent.
The study was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, and the Center for the Future of Work at Carnegie Mellon University.
Cynthia Murrell, May 14, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Arnold Columns: Update May 2012
May 9, 2012
We have continued to produce Stephen E Arnold’s for-fee columns. Due to some minor health excitement involving Mr. Arnold, his monthly update about what and for whom he has been writing for money has been on hold. The content continued to flow. Here’s a run down by publication of the for fee columns submitted through May 8, 2012:
Enterprise Technology Management, IMI Publishing, London, UK. ETM publishes my Google column which originally appeared in KMWorld.
- January 2012, “Google Enterprise: The Berkeley Analysis.” The article discusses why a noted university chose Google’s apps, not Microsoft’s. The point is that price cutting is playing a major role in information technology decisions.
- February 2012, “Google Enterprise: Is There a Poison Apple in Paradise?” The column reviews the new version of the Google Search Appliance. The question becomes, “Could Apple pose an alternative to Google, an alternative Google is not anticipating?”
- March 2012, “Google Privacy and Enterprise Licensing.” This write up explores how recent revelations about Google’s approach to privacy may put barriers in place which could slow or block some Google enterprise license deals.
- April 2012, ”Google’s Cloud: Building and Threatening.” The essay considers that Google has been left in the starting blocks by Amazon’s cloud services. Google may catch up, but the pricing of cloud services, regardless of vendor, can be slippery to estimate.
- May 2012, “The Google Myth: Poetics and Glass.” The story considers Mr. Page’s role with Wall Street and Mr. Brin’s assignment to promote Google’s virtual reality “glasses.” Will these modern day Romulus and Remus billionaires continue to coexist in a positive relationship?
Information Today, Information Today, Inc. The Information Today column covers search-related topics for the an information specialist, competitive intelligence researcher or database publishing professionals.
- January 2012, “Augmented Reality: I’ll Be Back”. Autonomy, best known for enterprise search and content processing, has emerged as a leader in augmented reality or AR. The column discusses Aurasma, the company’s AR solution.
- February 2012, “By Jingo: Search Catchphrases 2012.” This article considers the role and implications of marketing phrases used by enterprise search vendors. The majority of the buzzwords have more to do with competitive jockeying than communication to an organization looking for a findability solution.
- March 2012, “Health and Medical Research: Drying Up the Bones.” Web-accessible, public medical information is tough to use. The essay looks at several services, including Quertle.
- April 2012, “Are Analytics the New Way to Search?” Most users don’t search particularly well. Some do not want to formulate search queries. The write up considers the question, “Can analytics deliver search results without asking the user to formulate a query?”
- May 2012, “Google and Microsoft: Interface Flipperoos.” The story points out that the new Google interface looks more like Excite 1996 than Google in 2007. Microsoft, on the other hand, looks almost exactly like Google.com’s interface in 2007. Are flips like this the new approach to search interface innovation?
KMWorld, Information Today, Inc. The column for KMWorld discusses enterprise information from the angle of semantic technology.
- January 2012, “Insight from the Information Tsunami.” The column discusses Microsoft SharePoint and BA Insight, a software complement to SharePoint designed to address some of the “issues” associated with Microsoft’s flagship content management system.
- February 2012, “Bitext: Engaging in the Semantic Arena.” The article profiles Madrid-based Bitext, a company emerging as a leader in the enterprise semantic market.
- March 2012, “Xyte and Insight into Online Behaviors.” The write talks about Xyte’s approach to market research and discloses some interesting findings about Facebook. These items suggest Facebook is a more potent online force than some believe.
- April 2012, “Consumerizing Knowledge Management.” The essay considers that analytics programs with training wheels deliver some benefits to enterprise users. However, acting on auto-generated reports without understanding the assumptions behind the report can lead to bad decisions.
- May 2012, “Big Data, Cows, and Cadastres.” The write up looks at specific business pay offs from the analysis of big data. The biggest benefits come from analysts who understand the data and the math behind a particular numerical recipe.
Online Magazine (published six times a year). Information Today, Inc. The features written for Online Magazine focus on open source search in the enterprise. For more than a year, Mr. Arnold’s column has explored a range of subjects related to open source search.
- February 2012, “Open Source Search: Clarity with Lucid Works.” The feature discusses Lucid Imagination’s newest release of Lucid Works Enterprise 2.0.
- April 22012, “Open Source: Fascinating Uncertainty.” The feature takes a look at some of the jockeying which takes place in the open source world involving “foundations.”
If you are a public relations person, an azure chip consultant, or an unemployed middle school teacher, Mr. Arnold does not accept story suggestions for these for fee writings. His policy is to contact people with regard to a question or issue. Mr. Arnold is not a journalist. In a previous life, he indexed medieval sermons in Latin. He does not understand “real” journalism, marketing, public relations, investment bankers, private equity firm owners, and sales people.
These articles are available from the publishers who purchased work for hire. At some point, Mr. Arnold’s staff may post versions of some of the essays on one of the reference Web sites Mr. Arnold operates. For copies of these articles, please, contact the publishers. For a briefing on one of the topics addressed in Mr. Arnold’s for fee writings, please, contact us at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Donald C. Anderson, May 9, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
