What's new in search technology? Is Google it?
Search technology has come a long way in 10 years. Google's success has attracted lots of entrepreneurs and VCs, all looking for The Next Big Thing in search. In an earlier post, "Three moves that could topple Google" I explored three areas ripe for innovation.
The innovation breaks down into three different categories; UI enhancements, Technology advancements, and Vertical segmentation.
User Interface (UI) enhancements attempt to improve the user experience and visual representation. Companies working in this area include; Snap, Live.com, and SearchMash. I would add Quintura, which presents search results in a "visual cloud" that clusters results by meaning and intent.
Technology advancements include; Hakia , Powerset , and Mindset , which search based on meaning or intent. Vivisimo and Ask.com present results in clusters that allow you to refine or expand your search. Findory, Jookster , Swicki , Collarity, and Rollyo do personalized or social search that present results based on your personal preferences or circle of friends. There are also a bunch of companies doing "tag" or "voting" based search...companies like Technorati, Digg, TailRank, and others.
Vertical market segment search has lots of players in each category;
I don't see any "Google killers" amongst the current crop of start-ups. The big search engines, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask are experimenting with all of these approaches. There will be some small acquisitions along the way but nothing in the YouTube size or scale.
In my opinion there are three big areas of opportunity in search; Mobile search, Local search, and Classified ad search. There is no clear leader in these areas and the market is under-served.
Mobile search on cell phones will be huge! The challenges are UI design for input and retrieval, rendering of results for small screen size, and tagging the index of sites by geography. A voice recognition interface seems logical for mobile search, but the technology is still lacking.
Local Search is basically mashing up the Yellow Pages directory with Maps and business web sites to provide business search for consumer buyers. Sounds simple but there are millions of small businesses, many of them are not listed in the Yellow Pages, some of them don't have web sites, and they move or go out of business often, making the mapping part difficult. There needs to be a new business model and easy self service profiling for businesses to make this work.
Classified Ad Search is currently dominated by Craigslist and eBay who provide a destination site for ads. The thousands of local newspapers also have a big chunk of this business for print based classifieds. We are talking billions of dollars and millions of consumers who place ads. Again, a new business model, a new way to aggregate and classify, and a self service approach will be a big hit and make a ton of money.
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According to some, Searchmash is a Google thing.
Terry
Posted by: terrycojones | December 13, 2006 at 04:08 PM
I want to introduce a innovative approach to
searching called Command Engine. Command
Engine shall provide ways to index the web in terms of it's vital service as a command. At the end , the end-user shall get to command the web.
For a demo of this idea, please visit
http://www.commandengine.com/
Posted by: Raju Mariappan | December 13, 2006 at 06:17 PM
Terry, You are correct. SearchMash is a Google thing. Also note that Mindset is a Yahoo thing and Live.com is a Microsoft thing.
One of my points was that the big guys (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) are already experimenting with this stuff, and some of it is already in beta test.
I don't see any of these start-ups as "Google killers". The big guys can test a few approaches, and quickly implement anything else that might become popular. No need to pay big bucks to acquire a technology.
Posted by: Don Dodge | December 13, 2006 at 08:15 PM
Great points, but I think local and classified ad search can be considered as types of vertical search. edgeio is a very good example for classified ad search for instance. They're abstracting Craigslist, eBay and others - a similar approach to indeed, simplyhired and other verticals.
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | December 14, 2006 at 03:12 AM
Google 2.0 = p2p search engine
Posted by: Dimitar Vesselinov | December 14, 2006 at 10:52 PM
If I remember correctly, Napster and Kazaa were also p2p search engines.
Posted by: Adrasteia | December 21, 2006 at 10:05 PM
Hi, Added a new value add to my blog this weekend - a news widget from www.widgetmate.com. I always wanted to show latest news for my keywords in my sidebar. It was very easy with this widget. Just a small copy paste and it was done. Great indeed.
Posted by: Mark Vane | June 22, 2007 at 06:50 AM
For specialized search engines, I have one, coolposting.com. It is for searching discussion forums on hot deals. In the future, could expand to other areas.
Posted by: Jian Chen | September 23, 2007 at 02:01 AM
Great post! Thanks for sharing all these insights, tips and resources. I will surely take note of all of these.
I have in fact bookmarked this. Thanks!
Posted by: Aurelius Tjin | February 28, 2008 at 07:58 AM
It looked like the classifieds space dried up with Edgio folding, but Kijiji has revived the space. Backpage has also emerged in the space. Local is the billion dollar market that no one has cracked yet. Too many are treating it like a glorified yellow pages- when there's an opportunity to change the way people discover great businesses.
Posted by: Yellow Pages Guy | May 10, 2008 at 02:07 AM
Interesting stuff. Will be interesting to see if Classifieds remains a vibrant space with Edgio exiting.
Posted by: Yellow Pages Guy | May 10, 2008 at 02:09 AM