The
Google search engine has been everyone's tool for finding information
on the Inter for years. Sooner or later, this one line process will be
evolving. The article below discusses what may be next!
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Is search on the internet broken? From
yourstroy.com
OCTOBER 19,
2015
You, me and every reader of this article are users of the
Internet.Google, through it’s single-line query function, has been our gateway
to the Internet for as far as we have needed to digitally search the web for
information. But what if the way we find information today is slowly priming us
to adopt a method of search which may not scale to our needs? How does search
have to evolve to keep pace with the next billion users the Internet is getting
onboard?
Our reliance on Google to access information is so heavy
that most of us have become part-time experts at ‘Googling’ information
prodigiously. We start entering words to run a search, take the input of
auto-complete suggestions for tailoring it, start seeing results and then
re-run searches with a slightly different mix of words to more closely surface
what we’re looking for.
Effectively, we have intuitively internalised how Google’s
Search works and we enter queries in a manner that aids surfacing apiece of
information. With every single search we make, we are building upon a process
of trial-and-error that guides us to input just the right mix of keywords which
we believe will surface the most relevant results.
We have become sophisticated searchers by course-correcting
on previous countless searches.
As digital pervades our lives, more and more of the
information (that restaurant review or news article or funny GIF or YouTube
video or friend’s wedding picture) we also search for belongs on the Internet.
Search functions to augment human intelligence by bringing information on our
fingertips. As we try to reach further into and more firmly grasp this
information, the management of our search queries needs to keep pace.
Google’s original keyword-driven search and link-authority
based approach to helping users find information was a breakthrough in
surfacing and ranking relevant information. This approach has continuously
evolved to maintain quality in search results while factoring in changes in how
people are using the Internet and the complexity of search queries. Some of the major changes have included results
driven by user-personalisation, auto-complete style instant searches, inclusion
of real-time information, localising search by integrating with maps and adding
places and social signals.
The biggest change, however, has been the establishment of
theKnowledge Graph.
Announced in 2012, this has been Google’s first major step in semantic search.
Essentially, through the Knowledge Graph, Google goes beyond keywords to
classify objects into different categories and illustrate the relationships
between these objects. The Knowledge Graph and its relationships appear in a
panel on the right side of the user’s screen when searching for a well-known
individual, e.g. Narendra Modi surfaces
his birth information, his family relations, other politicians also searched
for etc.
While the Knowledge Graph is a step into semantic search, we
are ultimately constrained not just by limited space but more importantly one-time input into this box.
Amidst researching sources for this piece and looking for
well-known individuals to illustrate the Knowledge Graph (above), I searched
for the founder of YourStory, Shradha Sharma – I was greeted by an
‘intelligent’ panel based on the Knowledge Graph which showed me details on an
emerging singer from Dehradun who has nothing to do with YourStory but is a pretty talented singer. The
single-input function is thus not able to effectively understand the larger
context within which I’m searching.
For search to be truly semantic and increasingly relevant,
it is important for the search engine to understand the intent and contextwithin which
a search is taking place. Limiting input to a single-line query naturally
restricts user input and guidance that can help provide intent and context.
At its bare basics, the function of search is to find information.
When we have a conversation or interact with somebody, we
are following a strand of conversation that starts in a broad domain and with
each back-and-forth question-and-answer seeking information,we are using and building upon context to find more relevant information.
We are also using the building contextual framework to
understand the intent of the other person.
Whether somebody is looking to buy something, learn more about a topic,
understand the relationship between certain topics or browsing information to
make a more informed decision, intent becomes
increasingly important in keeping the conversation relevant.
Let’s look at a few newer approaches to search to understand
the extent to which context and intent augment search:
Google Now: Baked right into Androids, Google Now plugs into
and links together data sources like location, email, calendar, app usage and
app indexing to present intelligent information in a card view as and when
needed. Google Now is a big leap in understanding and accommodating the passive and general context of a user’s
requirements.
Wolfram Alpha: Unlike Google, this ‘computational knowledge
engine’ fetches the answer to queries inline from external data sources by
computing and extracting the relevant information.
Vurb: Similarly to Google Now, Vurb curates information
around specific objects into cards. A social element helps users collaborate on
plans, but the focus for Vurb is around curated organisation of information
without a capacity for understanding context or intent.
In-app searches: By their nature, in-app searches provide a
closed system which gives a general domain/context within which the search is
occurring. E.g. Searching within the Wooplr app assumes that the user is
looking for apparel rather than documents. The intent of such a search can
range from discovery or information or transaction or more.
Most of the above approaches are evolutions along the lines
of curating and organising information better in terms of categorising objects
and drawing relationships between them. None of these approaches delve deep
enough into understanding context and intent as a natural conversation would.
Now until Oculus (read ‘Facebook’) has us plugged into a
virtual reality, indistinguishable from the real world, where Siri or Google
walk around with us (I personally imagine them as dogs), ready to strike up a
conversation (I shudder to think of what happens when that person you hit it
off with at a bar is really just a Durex ad) and give us any information
we need, what does the intermediate bridge to that reality look like?
Well, through its Search API, Apple is gaining access to
more and more information that is hidden behind apps.
Siri, which can understand broad contexts from location, time and historical
behaviour, will start to double-down to narrower contexts and understanding of
intent by having conversations that mimic the back-and-forth of human
interaction. This eight-second video is a glimpse of the power of such interactions.
But, more seriously, is this type of natural search
something that can scale for these next billion Internet users?
Siri has not proliferated the Indian market and is unlikely
to in the immediate future. Localisation to a substantially different audience
is something that gets more complex in a conversational framework which
necessitates specificity. The accessibility of
search to the next billion users of the Internet is thus also increasingly
important.
This debate about search is thus not only about how to make
search increasingly relevant, but also about making the gateway to information
much more accessible for the next billion users.
If Google is priming us to conduct searches a certain way,
then invisible barriers are being created for people who do not have the same
intuitive understanding of how to surface information correctly. The behaviors
of this new generation of direct-to-mobile internet users is raw and new to us;
a large number of them who are on Facebook and Whatsapp have no idea they are
even using the internet.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=++++++ For a great email parody, view the following link:
=======================================================
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw
scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618
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