Category Archives: Web Search

The Spring Search Insider Summit and My Hidden Agenda

First published April 16, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I have an odd reaction whenever I get an email from Ken Fadner in my inbox. My face contorts in the strangest way. It’s half a bemused smile, half a wince, with a dash of anticipation thrown in. For those of you who don’t know him, Ken is the publisher of MediaPost. I’ve been working with Ken in putting the agenda together for the upcoming Search Insider Summit on Captiva Island, Fla.

You Have Mail…

Ken is remarkable in that, as far as I can tell, he reads every single post and column that goes up on the MediaPost site. In fact, Ken can remember more about my past columns than I can. “You know,” Ken will tell me as we discuss some topic, “you wrote about that last year.” Inside, I say to myself, “I did?” while on the outside I nod wisely and knowingly.

Ken also has the admirable quality of making sure the Insider Summit agenda is as fresh, relevant and insightful as possible. Hence my contorted reactions to his emails. We’re just three weeks away from the Summit. For everyone who’s programmed a three-day show, you know you pretty much want to have the agenda locked down by now. But Ken and I also decided three shows ago to make the Summit more a free-flowing conversation than a series of panel presentations. So I remain damned by that decision. How the hell do you program a free-flowing conversation? And Ken, every time he reads an interesting post or column, pings me and says, “Should we add this to the agenda?”  Hence the contorted facial expressions.

Search Touches Everything Now

What is interesting in this is the breadth of issues that are trying to vie their way onto our three day agenda: Search and the economy, search and brand relationships, search and ad exchanges, search and online experiences, search and attribution models, search and internal corporate politics.

Defining the scope of a Search Summit is not nearly as easy as it was a few years ago. Then you had two topics to choose from: organic optimization and paid search management. Sessions centered on a deeper tactical dive into one of these two areas. But now, search rides on the crest of our rapidly changing behaviors. Search seems to touch everything, including our relationships with our customers, how we navigate our online landscapes and how we create an internal and external structure to better “get” search and execute on it. These are not topics that fit nicely into a 12-minute PowerPoint Slide deck. These are big, brawling, thorny issues, going to the heart of a huge shift in how we market and conduct our businesses. These are topics that can only be dealt with in conversations, in fact; many conversations that don’t begin with the pretense that we’ll reach a neat, tidy answer at the end of them. Which all sounds good in theory, but how do you build an agenda around that?

Snippets of Random Conversations…

Let me give you one example. Gian Fulgoni from comScore and I connected on the phone to discuss the topic for his morning session: Search in a Recession. Going into the call, I though I had a pretty clear understanding of what the session would be.  Gian would share some query trends showing how people’s interests, translated into search queries, have shifted given the economic conditions. But within 10 seconds our conversation had veered down a related but different path. It was fascinating, potentially profound in its implications and well worth a discussion. But there’s only so much you can pack into a three-day schedule.

Here’s another example. One of the agency support team members at Google emailed me, saying one of her team members was looking for something on the “psychology of search.” I had done a presentation on something similar at Google a few months back, and she wanted to pass along the deck. Personally, I was thrilled. The psychology of search is something I’m intensely curious about. I just never expected anyone to ask for it by name.  And it’s certainly not something you would have seen on the agenda of a search conference in 2003.

So, if you’re making plans to come to Captiva Island, (and please do, it’s a wonderful experience) I’ll do my best to lock down the agenda long enough to actually get it printed for the handouts. But don’t be surprised if conversations veer off in unexpected directions.  It’s what makes the Search Insider Summit what it is. Meanwhile, somewhere I’m sure Ken is reading this column, going “Hmm…the psychology of search. We should add that to the agenda!”

I’m expecting the email any second now.

Microsoft’s Talk vs. Microsoft’s Talk

First published April 9, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Not so many columns ago, I urged Microsoft to do something amazing in search. Last week, they did. But it wasn’t in a good way. I was on the road last week, and I saw three different things land in my inbox about Microsoft and its search efforts. With each email, my frustration mounted. Finally, Friday as I was sitting in Seattle airport, I couldn’t contain myself anymore. I sent an email to the most senior person I knew at Microsoft Search. The gist of the email was “don’t do it,” Yesterday, I got an email back thanking me for my “honest” feedback. Yet somehow, I don’t think it will make a difference.

Here were the articles I saw:

One – Google can’t innovate but Microsoft can, according to Bloomberg.com:

“Being the underdog in the Internet- search market has one advantage for Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer: He says his company can experiment, while rival Google Inc. plays it safe. ‘Google does have to be all things to all people,’ Ballmer said… Our search does not need to be all things to all people.'”

I believe Ballmer is right here, in theory. What’s happening in reality is something very different. But let’s hold that thought for a moment.

Two – Search isn’t solved, according to Arstechnica.com:

“We’re not at where we’d like to be,” Weitz [Stefan Weitz, Microsoft Web Search Team] began, and then dove in to explain that people are generally happy with how their search engine is working, until the data shows that they are not.”

Nobody is arguing that the 10 blue links is the pinnacle of search, especially Google. So it’s hard to disagree here. We judge relative to what we know, but we’re on the brink of blowing that away.

So far, Microsoft is saying all the right things.

Three – Microsoft to spend $100 Million in advertising new search engine, according to Adage.com
“Industry executives expect JWT, part of WPP, to unveil an estimated $80 million to $100 million push for the new search engine in June, with online, TV, print and radio executions.”

What? This was the email that drove me over the edge. $100 million? On Kumo..or Kiev or whatever they call this? This is wrong on so many levels, I hardly know where to start.

I’m not going to pass judgment on a search interface I haven’t got my hands on. I don’t think it’s fair to make a call on a few leaked screenshots.   But I will say that I’ve seen nothing revolutionary about this. And that’s the point. As I’ve said over and over and over, Google is a habit. You don’t break a habit with $100 million in advertising. You don’t break it with promises of search usage kickbacks. And you certainly don’t break it with a marginal and incremental change in the search experience. Microsoft is right to introduce categorized search. They’re right to explore changing the search interface. No arguments there. But this is not the time to draw $100 million in attention to it. Best case scenario: no improvement to market share. Worst case, the biggest drop yet, if the usability aspects haven’t been fully thought out.

If you accept the message in the first two emails, Microsoft needs to be a search start-up: bold, nimble, visionary, passionate and rebellious. And there’s no way in hell that will happen on the Redmond campus.  Bold, nimble, visionary, passionate rebels are nowhere to be seen.

The First Step is Admitting the Problem

So accept what you are, and more importantly, accept what you’re not. Tweak your search product to improve experience, catch up and try to stem the market share bleeding. There’s nothing wrong with that. And stop with the rebranding. Every time you do that, you’re breaking the established habits of your own users and giving them the chance to go elsewhere.  This strategy will blow up in your face.

At the same time, stop worrying about winning the 10 blue link search war and start planning for the next battle. That’s when the Google habit will be broken and where you have a chance to change the game. Here are the things Microsoft needs to start thinking about:

–       Stop worrying about relevance and start worrying about usefulness.

–       Understand that search patterns represent a complex system and look at ways to discover emergent behavior from that system. Use your findings to improve everyone’s search experience (this is an element in Stephen Wolfram’s Alpha project)

–       Use every signal at your disposal to interpret user intent in an implicit way. Embrace personalization, behavioral patterns, the social graph, task context and anything else that helps uncover what’s in a person’s mind.

–       Reinvent the interface. Embrace how humans follow information scent. Use more intuitive interface tools to allow us to choose, filter and drill into promising paths. And make it workable in much less real estate.

–       Make a better search experience personal and portable, seamlessly transferring from the desktop to the mobile device.

–       Hold Google’s feet to the fire. Follow your own advice and innovate faster and better than they do.  Because you’re right, it’s difficult for them to innovate and risk alienating their user base. But here’s the flipside to that. It’s easier for them to take that risk when there’s no strong alternative to go to.

Before You Say No, Just Listen…

If Microsoft really wants to spend $100 million on search, here’s my suggested plan. Take $20 million and fund 10 start-ups for $2 million each. Give them a one-year mandate to reinvent search. Take the remaining $80 million and use it to develop a TV reality show. Call it “Google Killer.”  Get Steve Ballmer to host. He can throw chairs, do the Monkey Dance and lead the audience in a chant of “Developers, Developers, Developers.”  I guarantee you’ll get a better return on your investment.

And if someone at Microsoft is listening, I’m free to discuss the development deal for the show. Hell, I’ll even be one of the contestants.  Call me anytime.

When Search and Social Collide

First published March 12, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I feel the ground shifting under my feet. And I’m not the only one. John Battelle voiced his perception of shift in a post  this weekend:

Search, and Google in particular, was the first true language of the Web. But I’ve often called it a toddler’s language – intentional, but not fully voiced. This past few weeks folks are noticing an important trend – the share of traffic referred to their sites is shifting. Facebook (and for some, like this site, Twitter) is becoming a primary source of traffic.

Why? Well, two big reasons. One, Facebook has metastasized to a size that rivals Google. And two, Facebook Connect has come into its own. People are sharing what they are reading, where they are going, and what they are doing, and the amplification of all that social intention is spreading across the web.

Talking the Talk

I find Battelle’s analogy of language particularly apt here. I’m a big Steven Pinker fan and am fascinated by the way we process language. It maps well to our use of search.

There are two bursts of language development that correspond to the two biggest periods of brain development. The first, during the first few years of our lives, are when we assimilate the rudimentary rules of our mother tongue. We move from single words to small sentences. We use our new channel of expression to begin to connect with our physical environment, telling others our basic needs (hunger, diaper changes) and asking why things are. At the earliest stages, we explore through language.

The next is during adolescence. Now, we use language to connect with others. We fine-tune empathy, create relationships and probe the fit and fiber of those relationships through words.  We mirror others’ emotions in our own minds, and language is an essential part of that process.

As Battelle says, our use of Google equates to our first explorations of our online world. Our queries are quick and primitive stabs in the dark, hoping to find something of interest. But now, we’re become online adolescents. We’re connecting and conversing, and in that, there is a new and indexable Web or words  that becomes very interesting.

Humans being Human

Online becomes fundamentally important when we use it to do the things that come naturally for us. Seeking information is natural, and search gave us a new and more effective way to do it. Connecting with others is natural, and Facebook and Twitter give us a new way to do that as well.  This isn’t about technology. This is about being human. Technology should be transparent in the process.

But when those fundamental activities leave lingering digital footprints that are quickly converging, there is something staggering in the implications. The ability to create feedback loops between patterns that emerge in the complexity of online, and then use that ability to navigate and connect to places and people, foretells the future of the Web. Twitter and Facebook are not replacements for Google. They are social signals that potentially increase the effectiveness of our online language exponentially.  To quote Battelle again:

The conversation is evolving, from short bursts of declared intent inside a query bar, to ongoing, ambient declaration of social actions.

Consider the implications: Google’s mission to index and organize all the world’s information; the increasing use of personalization to uncover your conscious and subconscious intent; and, the ability to tap into the very vibrations of a vast social network. It will take time to bring it together, but when it does, it will change everything.

Search a Real Downer

The latest numbers from comScore show how the mood of the nation has shifted, and how it’s being reflected in what we search for. This is a topic I’ve talked about numerous times, so rather than spout it all again, I’ll just provide a few links to past posts. But I think one of the tables from the comScore release paints a pretty sobering picture:

Growth in Search Terms Related to Economic Downturn
December 2008 vs. December 2007
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore Marketer
Search Term 
Total Searches (000)
Dec-2007
Dec-2008
% Change
“Coupons”
7,637
19,921
161%
“Unemployment”
2,688
8,214
206%
“Discount”
6,271
7,928
26%
“Mortgage”
4,518
7,756
72%
“Bankruptcy”
1,012
2,589
156%
“Foreclosure”
824
1,373
67%
“Unemployment Benefits”
215
748
247%
“Online behavior has come to reflect the interests or concerns of Americans, and we are certainly seeing this manifest itself with respect to the economic downturn,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Search volume using terms relating to the economy has ballooned over the past year as Americans have become increasingly concerned over their economic wellbeing.”
Gian and I talked about this almost a year ago at the Search Insider Summit in Florida. That lead to a column in Search Engine Land talking about how whatever is top of mind for us translates into search activity – Battelle’s Database of Intentions. Ironically, this same tendency is one of the reasons why I think Search will do particularly well in the current economic meltdown – the subject of another Just Behave column.

Hyperlinking Reality

First published January 29, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Fellow Search Insider David Berkowitz (David, it’s been too long since we riffed on each other’s columns!) allowed his curiosity to wander down some fascinating potential directions search may evolve in a couple of recent columns, first looking at Ford’s plans for integrating GPS-enabled voice search  in all its  vehicles, and then speculating how one search could be launched in 17 different ways, both today and in the future. One of his speculations is what I wanted to explore further today:

“Instead of entering a query, Penny may be able to put on a special set of glasses and scan her surroundings for store names and reviews. The headsets and eyewear from Vuzix now link up to other portable devices such as iPods and camcorders, but they keep including more functionality within the gadgets themselves.”

Picture This…

Sound far-fetched? Not according to the MOBVIS (Mobile Attentive Interfaces in Urban Scenarios)  project in Europe. In a nutshell, the MOBVIS technology allows you to take a picture of your surroundings with your camera-equipped mobile device, then MOBVIS recognizes aspects of your environment and places hyperlinks on the items where it has relevant information. So, if you take a picture of a bus stop, MOBVIS can retrieve what buses stop there and what the schedule is. Assuming city buses are equipped with GPS and telemetric units, it could also tell you how long you have to wait for the next bus.

Currently, the MOBVIS project is visually mapping and testing in three European cities; Graz, Austria; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Darmstadt, Germany). Geo-referenced imagery tied to streetscapes from these three centers is online and available to the scientific community. One has to imagine that Google would be paying particular attention to this, as it’s a natural tie-in with its Street View project.

Say Cheese and Search…

So, let’s imagine what MOBVIS could do. First of all, it could be an incredible interactive guide, bringing mountains of information about your surroundings to just one click away on your mobile device. Dining reviews, items on sale in local stores, entertainment schedules and reviews, transit schedules, self-guided tours, could all live on the other side of the MOBVIS linking icon. Now, all that is theoretically available through GPS positioning, but in urban pedestrian applications, GPS has some functional limitations. It’s difficult to get an accurate enough fix to narrow your location to even a half block radius, especially in the downtown “urban valley” core. MOBVIS allows you to restrict your information quest to exactly what you want to include in your viewfinder, making it a much more specific query tool. Also, MOBVIS could be tremendously useful for the visually impaired, allowing them to scan their surroundings and retrieve information.

Making Reality More Useful

What MOBVIS does, along with all the other search permutations mentioned by David, is point the way of search’s future. I’ve always said that search is not about the destination, whether it’s Google, Yahoo or Live. It’s about the functional engine that sits behind the portal. It’s about the ability to link people with relevant information and, more importantly, timely functionality. Search is about letting people do what they have to do. MOBVIS is just one more way to establish the link. It’s a pretty amazing way that opens up some intriguing possibilities, but what makes MOBVIS exciting is its potential for helping us navigate our current reality. David’s 17 ways to search, Aaron Goldman’s past speculations about ambient findability, and my ongoing exploration of search as an expression of us reaching for our goals all share a common theme: search enhances our ability to do things.

In a recent post, Silicon Valley writer Sarah Lacy speculated that Google might be nearing the end of its reign as online’s Golden Child. She used some dubious logic about usage and traffic to posit that the mantle is ready to be passed to Twitter or Facebook. What she missed is the central premise of Google’s mission. It’s not about driving traffic to Google.com. It’s about connecting us with what we’re looking for. What Google has been doing through Google Maps, Street View, Universal Search, personalization, Google Mobile and yes, even the lowly but ubiquitous Google Toolbar, is weaving together the functionality needed to deliver on that mission. It remains to be seen whether Google will be successful in doing so, but it’s certainly well in the lead. And that’s the power of Google’s potential. It’s about providing the infrastructure to connect all the dots, both online and in the real world. It’s not about being one of the dots.

Apple Should Build a Search Engine

As I mentioned..got my iPhone late last week. What’s amazed me most is the attention to detail in the user experience. Every little thing has been thought through and integrated into the experience. As opposed to Windows Mobile..where every little thing seems to be developed seperately and then the whole ungainly mess is bound together with chewing gum and scotch tape. Can’t speak to the other mobile OS’s..but the iPhone amazes me.

There’s a philosophy here that seems to be recurring. You can throw brute force innovation at a problem, trying to overwhelm it by a sheer show of power. Or, you can create innovation around the needs of the user, making sure your solutions contribute to an amazing user experience. Microsoft seems to be in the first camp (where much of the ad hoc innovation ends up being dropped, just because it can’t be integrated in a useful manner) and Apple is in the second camp. You’ll see this in other industries. I’m thinking GM and Toyota’s approach to the driver experience.  I don’t think anyone on the planet has more respect for the user than Apple.

This is the thinking that’s desperately needed in Search. Google comes the closest, but even they don’t have the Zen-like holistic user experience that Apple seems to bring. It would be amazing to see these two colloborate on next generation search..with Google’s immense respect for relevant information, defined by the user, and Apple’s ability to weave it into a seamless and amazing experience.

To Google’s Competitors: Please, This Year, Do Something Amazing!

First published January 8, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A month ago yesterday, I was on stage in Park City, Utah at the Search Insider Summit with Danny Sullivan, Jeff Pruitt (SEMPO President/iCrossing) and John Tawadros (iProspect) talking about Google’s domination of the search space. Both Danny and I took Microsoft and Yahoo to task for not mounting a more significant challenge to Google’s dominance. It could be my imagination, but it seemed that for the rest of the Summit, I felt a bit of a chill in the air between myself and the Yahoo and Microsoft reps that ventured to Park City. I suspect the feeling was that as the emcee and moderator, I should have been less opinionated and more neutral. Fair enough, I guess, considering the root of the word moderator. But, with my first column of the new year, I felt I should clear the air a little bit.

I Like You, I Really Like You…

Really, Microsoft and Yahoo, I don’t hate you. You frustrate the hell out of me, but I certainly don’t hate you. I root for you constantly. I’ve always been an “underdog” kind of guy. Anything I mentioned on stage in Park City I’ve said directly to your respective development teams in Sunnyvale (Yahoo) and Redmond (Microsoft). I’ll tell anyone that listens. Ad nauseam, so I’ve been told. In a recent post, Danny Sullivan called it tough love. Danny and I have talked about this and we both really, really want you to succeed. But as much as I’ve tried to give helpful advice, the right people don’t seem to be listening.

Here’s the thing. I love search. I love its potential. I love the way it makes me more functional and sound smarter and better informed. Yet I know we’ve barely scratched the surface. There is so much more to come, but we need to get there as fast as possible. The only way to do that is to have a more competitive market. Google needs to have someone constantly breathing down its neck. The current market domination isn’t good for anyone, especially not the user. I suspect the engineers (not the bean counters) at Google even feel the same way. We need an arms race in search. Right now, it’s like the U.S. taking on Canada and Iceland (as a Canadian, I can say that). So when I say pull up your socks and take search seriously, I mean it with love.

Bottom Up is the Way to Go

In Danny’s post, he nicely outlines the symptoms of malaise at Microsoft. And lord knows everyone and their dog has been piling on the bash-Yahoo bandwagon in the last few months, so I won’t go there. The problem, as I see it, is that there’s a gap a mile wide between the top and bottom in both organizations. The result is a dysfunctional culture. The front lines at both organizations desperately want to do something significant in search, but they’re hamstrung by a lack of clear strategic focus from the top. Microsoft is locked in a product development mindset that squeezes anything amazing out before it can even make it to beta. Yahoo is trying to walk an impossible tight rope, tweaking the user experience while at the same time squeezing as much money as possible out of the search page.

To do something amazing in search, both organizations have to start at the foundation, the user, and rebuild from the ground up. What I would like to see is an approach taken by Intel and Apple in the past, leapfrog development. Let one team work on tweaking the existing product, and lock another team away somewhere to reinvent the future. Throw the rule book away and start over. Take your brightest rebels, remove them from the distractions of mind-numbing bureaucracy and panicked financial analyst reports, and let them do what they long to do: beat Google. Let them do something amazing.

Let People Be Amazing, Then Keep Your Hands Off

But please, if someone at Microsoft or Yahoo is listening, don’t make the same mistake GM did with Saturn. The launch of Saturn in 1983 redefined how a North American car company could be. Many of the legacy issues that plagued GM (confrontational union relationships, overly complacent dealer networks, quality control issues) were left behind with Saturn, creating an exceptional degree of loyalty and pride of ownership. In fact, Saturn became so successful that GM just couldn’t keep its hands off it, gradually bringing Saturn more and more into the GM corporate fold and, in the process, squeezing much of the life out of the brand.

Amazing things wither and die in an atmosphere of corporate bureaucracy, visionless management and political infighting. Search is too important and too vibrant to leave it to this fate. Let 2009 be the year to do something remarkable.

Fear, Greed and the Google Parallax View

First published December 18, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

— Gordon Gekko, “Wall Street”

Yesterday, I listened to an interview with Canadian businessman Stephen Jarislowsky. Jarislowsky is one of Canada’s richest men, our version of Warren Buffet. And he said something simple but profoundly important in the interview: Greed is strong, but fear is stronger.

Gekko is right. Greed does drive us. It is evolutionary. It’s hardwired into us. Harvard professors Nitin Nohria and Paul Lawrence identified the drive to acquire as one of the four primary drives of humans But as Abraham Maslow pointed out, there is a hierarchy of human needs and drives, and fear will always trump greed.

Our society has been defined by greed but I don’t agree that greed is right. It forces a zero-sum mentality, which, due to the blessings of fate, has resulted in a inequitable division of resources for us here in North America. The world’s possessions are seriously out of balance, and there is no way to redistribute without severe pain for those that currently have the possessions. Bill Clinton has been warning us about this for years, and it’s now beginning to happen. That is the pain we’re just beginning to feel, and we’re afraid. So, our evolutionary transmission has geared down into the first gear of survival: fear.

The interesting thing about this, from our own little slice of the world, is that we see our collective human consciousness captured in the query logs of Google. As we switch from greed to fear, we see search volumes reflect that. That’s why, in the past year, we’ve seen number of searches for “recession” catch and surpass the number of searches for “mortgages.” We’ve gone from dreaming about acquiring to worrying about defending, and whatever we’re thinking about, we search for.

This is a powerful demonstration of the power of search. It shows just how accurate a barometer it is of our collective mood. And mood determines reality. Our emotions are the jet fuel of our drives. They are our internal guidance systems that keep us on track to realize our goals. Our emotions, in aggregate, swing the economy, and the nation with it, from boom to bust. And there’s no better indicator of that then the searches we do on Google. John Battelle had it right. Google is the database of our intentions.

There has been endless speculation about whether search will weather the financial crisis. The question is really not worth asking. The fact that search has so accurately reflected the shift of our confidence shows how essential it is. Yes, people will use it less to search for things to buy and use it more to search for ways to survive, which will impact advertising revenues and cause pain (and hence, fear). But it is what it is. The search patterns show who we are and what’s on our mind.

But there will also be an interesting side effect that search marketers will have to adjust for. Kevin Lee called it aspirational searches. Just because we go into defend mode doesn’t mean we stop dreaming. Greed can be pushed out of the driver’s seat temporarily by fear, but soon we start planning our escape. Fantasy is a favorite activity of ours. Look at the boom of the movie industry through the depths of the Great Depression. Even though we can’t afford a new car or a trip to Mexico, we can still pretend that we can, and this ersatz consumer activity will also show up on Google’s query logs, causing much head-scratching about the sudden drop in conversions.

We’ll adapt to the new reality and we’ll survive. That’s why fear exists. It allows us to marshall our resources and focus on the threat. And eventually, greed will once again turn on the tap. The balance between these two forces has been swinging back and forth for hundreds of thousands of years. But never before have we had such a clear view of how it happens, thanks to search.

P.S. Just realized, because of the way the holidays stack up on the calendar, that this is my last column for 2008. It’s been a true pleasure spending each Thursday with you talking about search, branding, the brain and anything else that crossed my mind. Thank you for listening (and responding). I look forward to picking up the conversation again in 2009!

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.