IL2004 - Wednesday - 09:00 Search Engine Update and a Look Ahead

Originally posted 2004-11-17.

Chris Sherman
Editor, SearchDay
Associate Editor of SearchEngineWatch.com

Trends
- local
- personalization
- the return of push
- collaborative search
- email and desktop search
- unified search

demo of Google Local
demo of Yahoo Local
demo of Ask Jeeves Local
demo of MSN Search (beta) “Near Me”

Cool: Metrobot - 13 US cities

Personalization

demo of Google Personalized - slider
demo of Google Desktop Search
demo of MyYahoo (mysearch?)
demo of Yahoo Shopping, personalize using sliders
demo of MSN Personal (Search Builder) - sliders
demo of A9
demo of Findory - suggests new based on your reading patterns and what other people are reading
demo MSN personalized news

The Return of Push, Sorta

- RSS
- feed readers
- What’s different?  The notion of search, find, subscribe.

Choose Your Feed Tool

- Daypop, Technorati, Feedster, Bloglines, Blogory
- newsreaders NewsGator, Feed Demon, SharpReader
- real-time monitoring from PubSub
- coming soon: search alerts from Google, Yahoo sent via RSS rather than email

Collaborative Search

- Yahoo IM
- Furl
- Pluck
- Nextaris “research control panel”

Email and Desktop Search

Email
- Gmail started a new trend
- Yahoo mail is greatly improved
- LookOut for Outlook rocks
Desktop
- Google Desktop
- Copernic Desktop adds web meta search
- look for MSN Desktop by year end

Unified Search
- nobody’s really doing a good job of it yet

Next Moves

Google
- speculation: Google will take on MS in OS and applications. 
- Feasible?  bet on it.
- challenge: retain focus

Yahoo
- search is becoming Yahoo’s core DNA
- new initiatives in consumer search and mining invisible web
- challenge: educate users about what’s available

Ask Jeeves
- scaling Teoma, adding new features
- personalization and desktop search
- challenge: continuing to effectively pursue the “third way”

Microsoft
- MSN Search is version 1.0 - watch for major improvements is scale and relevancy
- MSN will attack on many fronts
- challenge: pursuading users to try it; overcoming the AutoGoogle effect

Conclusion
- no disruptive technologies in sight on the short-term horizon
- jockeying among the titans
- watch for more developments from Microsoft

Q desktop-based (standalone) search tools

HotBot ?

On releated note
Firefox is good, has lots of plugins.

Q Why aren’t personalized portals happening?

A People like easy stuff.  People don’t actually end up using portal.

Q How will broadband affect results?

Q What do you think about Vivisimo

Clusty

Mooter
Blinkx

Q In local searches, are they paying for placement?

They will be.
Yellow Pages war is coming