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Google's Mayer Says Personalization is Key To Future Search
rsmiller510 writes "In a wide-ranging interview with Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington on Wednesday at Le Web in Paris, Google's Marissa Mayer talked about all things Google, but what I found most interesting was when the conversation turned toward the future of search. Mayer said the key to the future of search lies in personalization. ... Mayer said in the future, Google (and presumably other search tools) will understand more about the user and be able to deliver more relevant information based on that knowledge. 'We think that when you look at the winning search engine in 2020 and what traits it's likely to have, we think the one thing that will be true is that it will understand more about you the user.'"
Video of the interview with Mayer is available at Tech Crunch. The personalization of search content focuses mainly on SearchWiki, which we discussed when it went live last month. The Register has a more cynical take on the discussion, seizing on comments by Mayer which indicated Google employees may evaluate SearchWiki's user ratings and use them to make "obvious changes" to search results for everyone.
Time to think of distributed search, rather than being dependent on Google or any other one search engine.
Besides, think of the legal implications. You sit down at a coworkers' 'puter and look for some pictures of kittens for the company Christmas newsletter. You search Google for "cute kittens" and the "personalized results" are all porn links or videos of kittens being tortured and killed, based on that users' search preferences.
Serch works now because it DOESN'T tailor itself to any one person's world-view, or give me what it "thinks" I want. If it ever ends up just giving me "what it thinks I want", we'll end up with an echo chamber effect writ large.
You can use Google Search without having a Google account, you know. You don't even have to allow cookies or Javascript and you can block ads. You don't get all the neat personalized features, of course, but it works fine.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Search personalization is of marginal value. In fact, it's kind of a pain, because searches become nonportable and nonrepeatable. If you tell someone else "search for ...", they won't get the same results you did. But advertising personalization... that's where the money is.
Google offers a great range of services and products, but almost all of them lose money.. No Google product other than search advertising makes money, and even that is declining. The Google Content Network (Google ads on non-Google sites) isn't that beneficial to the actual advertisers, and the more savvy advertisers have opted out of it. People click on those ads, but seldom buy. (By default, AdWords customers are opted in, and the opt-out checkbox is hard to find.) Google stock is down 57% from the peak, and revenue is projected to decline for the next three years. So Google is cutting back on new projects, killing off some of the money-losers, and trying to milk their one profitable product, ads on search results, for all they can.
Using search history, it would be straightforward to recognize specific big-ticket buying situations, like "looking for a car" or "looking for a house". This can be used for lead generation. Search for information about cars for a while, and not only do you start seeing car ads all the time, you get phone calls from sales reps.
People like you helping people like us help ourselves. - Processed World