Category Archives: Online Trends

Zappos New Business Model: Have Insight, Will Respond

A story this morning in Adweek about Zappos reminded me of a recent experience with a client. I’ll get to the Zappos story in a moment, but first our client’s story.

This customer wanted to set up a client summit at Google’s main office in Mountain View. Attending the summit were not only their search team but also some highly placed executives. The reason for the summit was ostensibly to talk about the client’s search campaign, but it soon became apparent that the executives were looking for something more. They had specifically asked for someone to spend some time talking about Google’s culture.

Throughout the day, Google paraded a number of new advertising offerings in front of the team. While the front line teams were intrigued, one particular senior executive seemed to be almost snoozing through the sales pitches for Google’s new advertising gadgets and gizmos. It was only when the conversation turned to Google’s business practices that the executive perked up, suddenly taking volumes of notes. It made me realize that sometimes, it’s not only what we sell that has value for our customers, it’s what we are. I chatted about this recently with someone from Google, saying that their corporate philosophy and way of doing business is of interest to people. I urged him to find a way to package it as a value add for customers. While he agreed the idea was intriguing, I think it got relegated to the “polite jotting down without any intention of acting on it” category.

Now, back to the Zappo’s story. That’s exactly what they’re doing, taking their customer service religion and packaging it so that thousands of businesses can learn by going directly to the source. Zappos Insights is a subscription service ($39.95 per month) that let’s aspiring businesses ask questions about the “Zappos way” and get answers from actual Zappos employees.

The service, said CEO Tony Hsieh, is targeted at the “Fortune 1 million” looking to build their businesses. “There are management consulting firms that charge really high rates,” he said. “We wanted to come up with something that’s accessible to almost any business.”

It’s a pretty smart move. There’s no denying we’re going through a sea change in how business is done. And I’ve always felt that there’s a impractical divide between consultants and businesses that are consistently implementing every day. It seems like you can either do, or teach, but not both. Amazing stories such as Apple, Google, Southwest and Zappos have shown that innovation with culture is as important as innovation in what ends up in the customer’s hands. Zappos is trying to blend the two in an intriguing revenue model.

Google’s Death Grip and Search Snapshots

First published December 11, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Considering that I’ve devoted the last six months to exploring the impact of brand in search in this column, I do have a bit of a backlog of other things to deal with, so today I’d like to clear the decks on at least two issues. Last week, I was in Park City, Utah for the Search Insider Summit. As usual, a number of insight comments bubbled to the top over the three and a half days. This time, many of them were centered on the Google hegemony. In fact, on Day 2, we tackled that very question with Danny Sullivan, Jeff Pruitt, President of SEMPO (day job: iCrossing) and John Tawardros from iProspect. What did we resolve? Not very much, but that didn’t make the conversation any less interesting.

Google is Looking Good by Comparison

When it comes to search as it’s currently defined (we’ll get to that definition in a minute), Google is in a league of its own. But I think the panel agreed that it’s not so much that Google is doing exceptionally well as that the competition is either standing still or going backwards. Yahoo is struggling on many fronts and its search experience is drifting without direction (other than bolstering the sagging bottom line). And Microsoft not only isn’t in the race, its strategists can’t seem to agree amongst themselves where the starting line is. Right now Google’s algorithm could be powered by beer, darts and a frat house and it would still outperform the competition. I’ve talked before about the Google Habit”(a term that came up again in the discussion) and right now, there’s no compelling reason to even think about breaking it.

Will the Threat Come From Below, If Not Above?

So, if the big players aren’t threatening Google, how about a start-up company? Several have stepped up to the challenge recently, as detailed in Aaron Goldman’s “Not so Natural Born Google Killers” series. But so far, it seems that they’ve all come to a gun fight armed with a jack knife. I get an invitation every week or two to look at the next “revolution in search.” As I’ve ranted about at length in the past, most of these starts-ups are based on some founder’s idea of what should be revolutionary, without really considering whether it helped the user. Cuill was particularly abysmal in this regard. And, if a start-up did somehow significantly up the ante for the search user, I’m guessing Google’s radar would pick it up and it would be quickly gobbled up. The three conditions that allowed Google’s emergence — a truly better algorithm, founders naïve yet capable of inventing a new kind of company, and competition too stupid to realize it — are unlikely to happen again.

One other point on this issue. If innovation comes from another player, it has to benefit the user. Google has always had a clear prioritization of goals. The user always comes first, monetization after. Yahoo and Microsoft don’t share this same philosophy, trying to juggle the goals of advertisers and users. Because of this, if something that revolutionizes search for the user comes from a start-up, Google will be looking at it through the right lens and will be more likely to recognize it for what it is. It could pass right under Yahoo and Microsoft’s nose without them realizing it.

Hint: Look Outside the Box

Given the factors above, the outlook is not good for easing Google’s death grip on search. But the fact is, we’re assuming search will remain as it is. As someone in the audience reminded us, search takes many forms in the digital world: looking for people, searching maps, scanning videos, etc. Much that is search happens outside the world we currently define as “search.” It’s from here that Google’s challenger might potentially come.

Search Snapshot

Now to the other piece of business I wanted to clear up this week. Obviously the world of search has changed a lot in the past 12 months. Google’s increasing domination is only one aspect. The global financial meltdown has turned everything upside down. So, with all the forces at play, what is the impact on search? Well, SEMPO is currently asking you just that in its annual State of Search survey. Please take a few minutes to share the view from your particular part of the search world.

Search Insider Summit: That’s a Wrap!

Another Summit is done. I’m just on my way home from Park City..and an ill timed cold aside, it was a great time!

A few things that stand out:

Meeting Old Friends. SIS is perhaps the most social of the many search shows. I had a chance to reconnect with old friends like Olivier Lemaignen, Rand Fishkin, Todd Friesen, Danny Sullivan, Jeff Pruitt, Richard Zwicky, Dan Boberg, Aaron Goldman and many, many others. And at SIS, you actually have a chance to visit.

Making New Friends. Some of the above friendships started at SIS. I still have active friendships from past ones, not to mention the beginning of some great partnerships. This summit also gave me the chance to make some new friends.

Great Conversations. This is what the Summit is all about..and this edition didn’t disappoint. Even though my extracurricular activities were somewhat curtailed by my cold, I still managed to have a number of fascinating conversations.

Intriguing Kick Off Sessions: Each morning of the Summit started with a particularly intriguing conversational session: Day One – The Implications of the Online Obama Campaign. Day Two – What does Google’s Dominance mean for Search, it’s competitors and for search marketers. Day Three – How can we improve the relationship triangle between publishers, agencies and marketers. Each session barely scratched the surface of interesting ideas that merit further discussion, but we had to reluctantly move on as other agenda items beckoned.

Stimulating Breakouts: A big shout out to Frank Lee and Dan Perry, who organized the break out discussions and the in house track on Day Three. Neither were able to attend the summit due to work demands, but their contribution made the show a great success.

Presence of Publishers: I didn’t get as many representatives as I was hoping from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, but what we lacked in quantity, we more than made for in quality. John Nicoletti and Katie Wasilenko from Google, Katherine Shappley and Esco Strong from Microsoft and Dan Boberg and Ron Belanger from Yahoo! represented their particular companies well (I’m sorry I didn’t get the name of other representatives. I know I’m missing someone from Yahoo! at least). A particular note of thanks to John and Katie for really embracing the spirit of the Summit, sticking through to the very end and being very involved in the breakouts. I had great feedback on the genuine concern and approachability.

In summing up, it was a great three and a half days, in a fantastic location (even though I barely stepped outside) with some really wonderful people. There are a number of others who helped make the show happen and I thank you all. A special thanks to my assistant, Denise Herrington, who made my frustrations and concerns her own and managed to corral everything together to make a wonderful event. And finally, a big thanks to MediaPost and the show sponsors (Dave Fall and Doubleclick deserves special mention for their huge support) for continuing to make the show happen.

David vs. Goliath Brands on the Search Results Page

First published December 4, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I talked about branding on the search page, effectively intercepting the user during consideration. Certainly if you’re a household brand name, you have to be at or near the top of searches for your product category if you want to defend your position in the prospect’s consideration scent. But what if you’re a new entry into the market or a relatively unknown brand. Can you still effectively play in the category? Yes, but you have to be smarter than your behemoth competitors. Fortunately, in most cases, that’s not too hard to do when it comes to search.

The Strategy: Play Broad, but Think Niche

First, it’s important to know the common behaviors of the searcher. We start at the top left and scan the results in the “Golden Triangle” first. Only after this will we look at the ads on the right. We look for relevance, based not just on the query we used, but the implicit labels we carry in our mind. We will start with the simplest query that we feel will yield acceptable results with the least amount of investment. And, we will click through on two or three results to compare the information scent on the landing pages. So, given this behavioral pattern, what can you do to catch the attention of prospects with broad generic queries?

First of all, you have to target your messaging with exquisite precision in the title of your ad. This is no mean feat, because the limit is 25 characters, including spaces. Each one of these characters is precious, because this is the part of your ad that will get read. At best, you’ll get spot scanning of your description (bonus hint, move your most important “hot button” words in your description so they’re in the line right under the title and near the front. And don’t be afraid to put prices in. They’re a disruption in the text-based pattern and so stand out to the eye).

Rule of thumb, start with the query (hit bolding of the query is an important relevancy cue) and then laser focus on the primary hot button for your niche target. Don’t be afraid to identify the target. If you’re on a broad category, but your target is B2B buyers, say so. If the differentiator is benefit, move it into the title. One example, laptops that are durable enough to stand the rigors of road warrior treatment: The query you’re bidding for could be “laptops,” but your title should be: “Rugged Laptops.” Because your brand is unknown to the prospect, don’t worry about putting it in the title.

Pick Your Spot

Secondly, in a broad category, you want to avoid unqualified clicks. So you’re going to have to move down the right rail, preferably targeting the #4 or #5 spot. Eye-tracking studies show that this spot gets decent visibility (because of how we move over to the right rail when we reach the bottom of the golden triangle) relative to the rest of the ads, yet doesn’t pull a lot of unqualified clicking. This position, together with your targeted message, stands a decent chance of catching the prospect’s eye without capturing ROI-deflating gratuitous clicking. The challenge will be fighting the tendency of Google’s quality score to push you off the first page of results.

Plan Your Tactics in Context

All too often in search, we plan our messaging without paying attention to the user context that leads to engagement. Your ad will be appearing together with a number of other ads and organic results on a search page. Users will be scanning through those ads and making their choice based on not just what your ad says, but what all the others do as well. Additionally, there will be at least a few clicks through to competitive landing pages. You’re going to have to plan your messaging relative to what your competition is doing. Do a query yourself and see what the landscape looks like, through the eyes of your prospect. What other choices are available? How effective is the landing page experience, again, with your prospect’s potential intent firmly in mind? If you adopt this mindset, you’ll be amazed at how the biggest brands in the business (any business, yours included) routinely fumble the ball when it comes to delivering what the prospect is looking for on the search page. Unfortunately, non-targeted messaging and irrelevant landing page experiences seem to be the rule rather than the exception. There’s plenty of room for smart search marketers on the average results page.

Measure, Test, Optimize and Repeat

If you’re playing in the high traffic but generic keyword space, devote a lot of time to testing and tweaking. Find optimum positions and wording. Carefully watch your ROAS metrics. Capture the micro-conversions. Be smarter than the competition and you’ll find that search page where you can pull off a victory, even when you’re faced with David vs. Goliath odds.

Democracy Changed on November 4th

101227_obama_chicago_ap_605Even as a Canadian, I was amazed by what happened the night of November 4th.

Obviously, every journalist and pundit will be falling over themselves talking about the historic implications of this election. Democrats and Republicans alike were gushing and seemed a little speechless about the implications of Obama in the White House. I have my own feelings but that’s not what this column is about. For me, this election was fundamentally historic for another reason. It changed forever the fabric of democracy in America.

3 years ago, I sat in a hotel conference room somewhere (it might even have been Chicago) and heard Dana Todd, then the President of SEMPO, say that search would be a very important factor in the next election. I smiled to myself, because I had been watching the somewhat ham fisted use of online tactics in the election just finished. “Why”, I thought to myself, “do these candidates fail to understand the fundamental importance of online. Don’t they understand that this provides an amazing new platform for democracy. How could they be so clueless?” The one candidate that did seem to grasp it was Howard Dean, but unfortunately, Dean’s campaign had other challenges that eventually overcame his online momentum.

“But what”, I mused, “would happen if you took the lessons learned from the Dean campaign and fielded a candidate with a campaign that fully ‘got’ the power of virtual connection”. My guess would be that it would be incredibly effective. Even with that, I had no idea how earthshakingly important it would be.

Unknown to me, two people, Jascha Franklin Hodge and Joe Rospars, the architects of the Dean online machine and co founders of Blue State Digital, were already making plans for 2008. The candidate? A junior senator from Illinois who had just rocked the Democratic National Convention with a stirring speech: Barack Obama.

I watched the entire process unfold, and at each step, I was impressed with the grasp of online momentum, its nuances and social connections. With Franklin Hodge and Rospars as architects, and with the help of a very Net savvy staff, Obama’s campaign built an online momentum that shocked Clinton’s handlers in the primaries and eventually rolled over McCain as well. Yes, there were many factors that led to success, not the least of which is the candidate himself, but I can’t help thinking that this campaign managed to crystallize it in a brilliant way online. Obama navigated the currents and eddies of online buzz masterfully, creating mini campaigns of intense interest and passion, mobilizing votes and raising money..lots and lots and lots of money. He (with his campaign architects) understood the fundamental connection of online, reaching many, hearing from many, one at a time. It was a campaign launched and won by we, the people.

On November 19th, 1863, another politician from Illinois gave what was intended to be a few impromptu remarks at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Lincoln finished that speech with these words:

“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

On Tuesday night, there was a new birth of democracy, the culmination of an election that used a new technology to bridge millions of gaps between Washington and people, to erase decades of division, estrangement and alienation. Yes, it was a brilliant campaign tactic, but it was more than that. It was an understanding that people needed to reconnect with their President and to have their voices heard. It was true democracy. No matter what your political affiliation and your feelings about Obama, the man, you have to feel hopeful that somebody in the White House finally “gets” the Internet and its awesome power to connect and effect change.

Bring Me the Head of Jerry Yang

In 1974, Sam Peckinpah directed the film Bring Me the head of Alfredo Garcia, the story of a bounty hunter who set out to avenge family dishonor (through rape and abandonment) by bringing back the aforementioned anatomical appendage.

If I were part of the Yahoo! family of shareholders, I’d be having similar thoughts about Jerry Yang. This just in..Yang wants to go back to the table with Steve Ballmer to open up the deal. Of course this time, the price will be a fraction of what was originally offered.

Yang isn’t stupid. This is hubris disguised as stupidity, which is worse. Hubris deludes the holder into thinking they know more than they do. It’s pride that overcomes rationality, clouds judgement and obscures reality. Effective leaders should know better, they should be able to see through hubris, especially when acting on behalf of shareholders. Yang failed miserably. He has, through hubris, crushed Yahoo! beyond repair. Semel started the decline through his arrogance, Yang simply took it in a new direction. When humble self evaluation was desperately needed, Yahoo! got bravado and blind delusion.

This isn’t new for Yahoo! Those goes back to the very cultural foundations of the company. In their glory days, they had a cockiness that makes Google seem positively Uriah Heep-ish (the Copperfield character that was “ever so humble”). But at some point during the past decade, you would have thought that Yang and company would have realized that they were a rapidly fading second place player and would have made the necessary adjustments. Not so. Yahoo! has been suffereing from a massive and chronic case of denial.

Here’s the thing. If Microhoo happens (can’t see how it won’t at this point) it’s still going to be a disaster for search. I’ll reserve judgement on the Display side of things, but I tend to agree with some opinions saying that Microsoft should get out of the media business. Yahoo deal or not, Microsoft doesn’t have the culture to build a successful media business. But let’s just talk about search. If Yahoo! is cocky, Microsoft is ten times so. Microsoft just doesn’t know how to play catch up. This, as I said when people started talking about the original Microhoo deal, is two dysfunctional families joining together. It will distract Microsoft from what they need to do, which is become truly innovative and disruptive in redefining search. They’ll think they bought breathing room. They’re wrong. Yahoo’s search business is obsolete and bleeding market share quickly. And the enormous task of integrating two cultures under the given circumstances will sink both ships. There can be no good that comes from this.

Which is sad. At this point, the only hope for search is Google and some amazing start up somewhere. The mighty haven’t fallen yet, but their shoelaces are tied together in what is essentially a sprint, so it’s only a matter of time.

Why Google Books is Important – Massive Even!

The announcement that Google has settled a $125 million lawsuit with publishers didn’t really get too much press. It also didn’t cause too much of a ripple in the blogosphere. But for an avid reader like myself, this is huge.

Much of the press that has happened has settled, predictably, around Google’s business motives. What will online browsing mean for publishers, or e-commerce channels like Amazon. Interesting questions, I’ll admit, but not nearly as interesting as what the digitization of all this information means for Google’s Mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Before I go into why this is so exciting for me, let me share how I read books. I read every book twice. The first time it’s by my bedside and I try to get through a set number of pages every night. The goal is just to enjoy the book. The second reading is going over and making notes, drawing out ideas I find interesting, cross indexing with notes from other books, and expanding on ideas that are sparked by different things that I’ve read. I keep these notes in an Excel spreadsheet so I can sort, search, filter and manipulate them, based on what I’m trying to do. So, in my own way, I’ve been doing my own Google books project. Often, other books are referenced and I add them to my reading list. By the way, interesting blog posts and online articles get the same treatment. It’s my way of organizing my own little world of information.

What I’ve found is that there is a disconnect between the printed world and the digital world. When I find an interesting concept that I want to explore further, my options are limited. I can search for a book that might be about the topic, but that’s often not granular enough. Some of the best information I’ve found are a few pages on a topic in a book about a totally different topic. This would never show up in most book searches. For example, the book I’m currently reading is about neuroplasticity (the ability of the mind to remap itself) and, there  buried on pages 240 to 280 is a pretty fascinating look at Quantum mechanics and the implications on the mind/brain debate (I know, I know..but these things are fascinating..to me, anyway). You need full indexing and keyword searchability to find these things.

That’s what’s fascinating about Google’s intentions with book search. This tremendous mountain of information, fully searchable and browsable. It breaks down the current publishing module and makes it more granular, relevant and accessible. It does for publishing what MP3’s did for music. And that, potentially, is huge.

Already, the digital revolution has pushed the traditional publishing model to it’s limits. Authors release free ebooks. There are blurred boundaries between published books and online commentary. Digital rivers flow past the old traditional channels and there is no stopping it. What Google Books does is finally update and make accessible the incredible back log of information that already out there. For any lover of books, that’s big news. And about time.

Chrome’s Shiny, but is it enough to Break a Habit?

How ironic!

After going on at length about how Google’s competition is the victim of the search juggernaut’s ability to make searching Google a habit, now they’re running up against the same brick wall with the introduction of Chrome.

With the introduction of a new product that’s vital to future strategies, one has to account for cognitive lock in and habitual behavior. Let’s do a walk through of two examples.

Searching by habit

First of all, my Google analogy. Using Google as a search engine isn’t a conscious choice, it’s habit. We don’t think about it, we just do it. And because we don’t think about it, you can’t take a rational approach to convincing us to do otherwise. You have to disrupt the playing out of the habitual script. And you can’t just disrupt it once. You have to destroy the script completely and permanently.

So Microsoft’s Cashback scheme was doomed to failure from the beginning. It was a rational appeal based on Microsoft’s offering to pay you an incentive for using their search engine. It’s a fundamental human appeal and, on paper, appears to make sense. The problem is, sense isn’t really enough to change habits. Here’s what will happen. Someone will hear about the Cashback offer and may actually rationally suspend habitual behavior in order to try Live Search. Their autopilot will be switched off and they’ll consciously take over the controls. But we’re programmed to revert to autopilot in order to save energy. So unless the experience offered such a tremendous benefit that it’s worth our while to continue to rationally keep our hand on the controls, we’ll turn our attention (remember, attention is a one task at a time proposition, so we have to be very judicious about where we choose to spend it) to other things and go back to autopilot behavior. Cashback would have to blow away our previous search experiences, giving us a benefit worthy of investing the time to create a new habit. Cashback simply didn’t raise the bar enough.

What Goes Up will probably Come Down

So, with that psychological foundation, one could predict with a fair degree of confidence what would happen with the introduction of Cashback. There would be a temporary blip upwards in marketshare as the least loyal of Google’s habitual users consciously decided to give it a try, and then because the experience wasn’t a revolution in search, habitual behavior would take over and they would go back to Google. Marketshare would quickly return to previous levels. In fact, because there are a number of subtle psychological scripts built to help us maintain our habits (habits are a evolutionary advantage because they allow us to function with less cognitive effort) we might even become more frequent Google users and less frequent Live users. The bounceback could actually cause Live to lose marketshare.

Now, let’s look at what actually happened. The early summer introduction of Cashback seemed to be the answer to Live’s woes, as Compete’s Jeremy Crane was quick to point out.  Marketshare took a quick jump upwards. But two months later, Cashback’s initial glow is quickly fading. Search users are switching their auto pilots back on, and the default setting is Google.

Chrome Plated Strategies

Now, with the introduction of Chrome, Google is facing exactly the same challenge. They’re calculating that Chrome will have what it takes to break the Explorer or Firefox habit. And exactly the same pattern is emerging, as people take Chrome for a spin to decide whether it’s breaking-habit-worthy. And at this point, the answer seems to be no.

There’s one potential difference here. Chrome is much more than a browser. Google has a shiny future planned for the web app interface. If they raise the bar enough, people may make the investment required to break their existing habit and reform a new one around Google’s browser. But don’t expect any big marketshare shifts until that bar is raised.

Note to Cuil: Read My Columns!

Cuil was introduced when I had other things on my mind, namely trying to jam 2 months of work into 2 weeks so I could take my family on a long vacation to Europe. So I didn’t get a chance to caste my jaundiced eye on the much touted Google killer that has so resoundingly flopped since it’s introduction. That’s too bad, because I could have saved everyone a lot of time. I don’t care how “cuil” the technology is in the background, from a search user perspective, Cuil is a disaster!

For the past several months, I’ve been writing on MediaPost and Search Engine Land about inherent human behaviors and how they play out on search. I’ve talked about the limits of working memory, information foraging theory, how we pick up scent, how we navigate the results page, how we respond to images versus text, how we’ve been conditioned to search by habit and how what we read on the results page connects with our unexpressed intent in our minds. Cuil fails miserably on all counts. It frustrates the hell out of me that people don’t pay attention to the basic rules of human behavior. If the founders of Cuil had read our eye tracking reports, read Pirolli and Card’s information foraging theory, read any of my posts or blogs or read any post by Bryan or Jeffrey Eisenberg or Jakob Nielsen, millions of dollars of VC funding, thousands of hours of development time and a lot of actual and virtual ink could have been saved. Unless Cuil completely revamps their interface, they’re doomed to failure.

Cuil completely disregards the conditioned patterns we use to navigate results pages. This is a risk, but an acceptable one. You can change things up, but you better damn well deliver when you do. All Cuil delivers is confusion. It’s almost impossible to pick up scent. The eye is dragged all over the page because there’s no logical presentation. Functionality is ambiguous, not intuitive. The mix of images and text does nothing to establish relevance. Perceived relevance of the SERP is nil. If I would have looked at this a few months ago, I would have predicted that users would try it once because of the hype, been mildly intrigued by the look but found it almost unusable, quickly beating a path back to Google. I didn’t need to do eye tracking. A quick glance at the results page was all I needed. Unfortunately, because my mind was on the French Alps rather than the latest Google killer, my first glance was 3 months delayed and my would-be brilliant prediction just sounds like “me-too” hindsight.

Ah well..

For others that have Google in their sights, a word of advice. Mix up the search business..shake the hell out of it. It’s time. Come up with a better algorithm, blow up the results page and see where it lands, jolt the user out of their conditioned behavior. By all means, take millions in eager VC capital and reinvent the game. It’s way past time. But please, don’t ignore the fact that humans are humans and there will always be certain rules of thumb and strategies we operate by. You can destroy the paradigm, but you can’t change generations of inherent behavior. Cuil never bothered to learn the rules. That’s going to cost them.

Search Behavior: I Don’t Know What I Want, or Where to Find It

First published July 31, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In my last two columns, I looked at how search plays a part when we’re in two information gathering states: I know what I’m looking for and where to find it; and, I know what I’m looking for but not where to find it. Today, I’ll look at what happens when we don’t know what we’re looking for or where to find it.

In the first two states, our intent is pretty well defined. We’re looking for a piece of a puzzle and we know the shape of that piece when we see it. In information-foraging terms, we’ve already defined our diet. It’s just a question of which patch we look in. When we extend that to search engine usage, we have already defined our query, and it’s just a question of how we interact with the results page. In both these states, search engines work pretty well.

The Missing Puzzle Piece

But what if we have no idea what the puzzle piece looks like. We don’t know the shape, we haven’t assembled the adjacent pieces and we only have some vague idea what the finished picture should look like. This is the ultimate challenge for online search, and one that all search engines have largely failed to meet until this point. This is where we need a guide and advisor, a connector between ourselves and the universe of potential knowledge available. Because our knowledge is imperfect, we need a sage whose knowledge is perfect — or, at least, much less imperfect than our own.

Of Disambiguation, Discovery and Berrypicking

This is where three concepts play an important role: the need to disambiguate, the thrill of discovery, and a revisit of Marcia Bates’ concept of berrypicking. Let’s begin with disambiguation.

When we have no idea what we’re looking for, we don’t know how to define it. We don’t know the right query to present to the search engine. The more imperfect our knowledge, the more ambiguous our query. This is where search needs better knowledge of who we are. It needs to know — through implicit signals such as our areas of interest, our past history and our social connections –what it is we might be searching for. If a search engine is successful in lending more definition to our query, it stands a chance of connecting us to the right information.

The second piece is discovery. If a search engine is successful in introducing potentially relevant information to us, our interaction is quite a bit different than it is in the first two information gathering states. We spend more time in our interaction and “graze” the page more. We’re also open to more types of content. In the first state (know what we want and where to find it) we’re just looking for the fastest navigation route. In the second state (know what we want but not where to find it) we’re looking for confirmation of information scent to judge the quality of the patch. But in the third state, we could be enticed by a website, an image, a news story, a video or a product listing. We’re pretty much open to discovering anything.

And this brings us back to Bates’ theory of berrypicking. Because we have no preset criteria for the type of information we’re looking for, we can change direction on the turn of a dime. In our pursuit, we fill in the definition of our prey as we go. We follow new leads, change our information-gathering strategies and sometimes completely change direction. Our interactions with search turn into a serendipitous journey of discovery. It is in the third state where our patience is generally higher and our scanning pattern the broadest. Any cues on the page that trigger potential areas of interest for us, including brands or cultural references, could catch our attention and lead us down a new path.

Search Pursues Discovery

It’s this type of search that Ask’s 3D interface or Google’s Universal results set was built for. It’s also the thorny problem of disambiguation that has spawned a number of approaches, from Google’s exploration of personalization to the human assisted approaches of ChaCha and Mahalo . Even Yahoo’s Answers is a discovery tool, using the more natural approach of question and answer to lend some definition to our information quest. But even though we are defining our criteria as we go, we still seek to conserve cognitive energy. We have a little more patience in our seeking of information scent, but just a little. We still spend seconds rather than minutes looking for it, and because search is still trying to get discovery right, our sense of frustration can mount rapidly. We’re still a long way from finding a universally satisfying online source for discovery.