The Future of Personalized Search? – Moz
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F
By: FreshEgg
February 16, 2009
The Future of Personalized Search?
Search Engines
This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.
I am very excited about the future of search and the possibilities that exist with new data being made accessible for search purposes. When you think about it, the one thing that is holding search back is accessibility to data. Once something is tagged with basic meta it can be searched for–imagine allowing your mobile phone to contain basic info about you that is then made available for search. This could come in handy when your friends are trying to find out what pub you are in on a Friday night!
So, how clever do you think Google could get in the future? How far can we extend our comfort zone to allow personalized search to become as powerful as it could be? I am going to explore some of these points in this blog post.
In the future, I don’t think it will be unreasonable to expect the generic search request ‘i am getting married’ to get the following results:
Wedding venues in ‘your town’ (recommended sites)
Catering company in ‘your town’ (related products)
Wedding photographers in ‘your town’
Caribbean honeymoons (Tropical Sky Holidays)
Holiday reviews for Caribbean honeymoons
Airport parking near Heathrow (GoSimply.com)
Travel insurance
Sunscreen (from Boots the Chemist)
Now imagine this. You have allowed the new (and made up) Google ShopperID service to track your buying habits. Each time you make a purchase with your credit card, the details are sent to your PRIVATE ShopperID Account. NB – I think it is important to say at this point that we (the search users) have to be confident with engines like Google that they are going to use our personal data in a way in which we are conformable with.
When Google first introduced personal search, I got the general feeling that people were scared of losing control of the results they were receiving and not really knowing what to expect. For personal search to work to its fullest potential, the major search engines need to build confidence that Personal Data is going to be used for the benefit of us and not the engine. Our personal data needs to be kept personal.So – we are now comfortable that our personal data is being used for our benefit to provide accurate search.
All our shopping activities have been stored and archived in our Google ShopperID Account. Google will now know so much about us. It will create search results that are specifically filtered/personalised for us. Google will know that we have a large income because we like to buy expensive brands and it will know what online retailers we like to use. Google will know where we live so it can recommend wedding venues and caterers in your town. It knows that you have a high income and money to spend, so it will recommend honeymoons according to your purchasing power. It knows what airport is closest to your home, so it will be possible to recommend the most relevant airport parking. Google will know that you last purchased travel insurance over a year ago, so it will recommend a travel insurance website to check out to update your insurances. It will know that you purchase several products from Boots the Chemist, so it can now recommend that you get your sunscreen from the online Boots store. The possibilities are endless. I think it would be fair to say that current search is only scratching the surface. Current search might only contain 5% functionality compared to where it could be in 5 or 10 years time.
In addition to this, I think there are numerous other opportunities to refine our search. I have been witnessing the surge of users adopting Twitter, and over the past month I have been using it (as much as time can allow) to see what possibilities there might be. I think it has been interesting to see what uses that this application is now offering us – it’s not just a ‘status update’ facility to let people know what you are having for dinner, it’s already become far more complex. I wrote a blog post at the weekend about how I have been using Twitter for search. I think Twitter is taking some search related traffic away from Google. I have noticed several people asking for advice on which hotel rooms to book, what mobile phone to buy, etc.
I am looking to buy a new Net Book (one of those micro laptops) and unconsciously I found myself going to Twitter as my first point of call. I have now built myself access to a community of like minded people, most of which also work in the same industry as me. So, it made sense to utilise this resource; “Can anyone recommend a Net Book with good battery and SIM card slot?” I was able to ask fellow ‘humans’ what they would recommend in relation to what my personal needs are. There is something important about getting ‘human’ results. I felt that I was more confident with the information when I received advice from a real person who wasn’t trying to sell me something. I was able to talk about their experiences with the product and relate those experiences to my personal requirements.
So, the next question is this: when is Google going to buy Twitter? 😉
You can follow Fresh Egg on Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/freshegg. If you aren’t on Twitter yet, give it a go!
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