SMX West 2008 Day 3 Keynote
Continuing the series of keynotes about the future of search, today we’ll be hearing “Generating Next: Search in the Coming Decade”. Unlike the previous panels, this is a panel moderated by Chris Sherman and Gord Hotchkiss. Panel members are Brad Goldberg (Microsoft), Larry Heck (Yahoo), and Peter Norvig (Google).
Question: Will search as we know it today survive?
Larry: When I got in last night, I popped in a cab. The cab driver asked what show I was going to. I said it was a search show. He complained that search is so bad today. “You click and you go back. Click and go back, and never find what you want.” Search will survive, but it must evolve.
Peter: Search will both be more central and more in the background.
Brad: I would break it into two pieces: what the user sees and what is going on in the background. I think we’ve got a good foundation with what is going on in the background, and we’re not going to throw that away. What will change is the user experience.
Question: How do we interact with this huge store of information as humans?
Brad: Changes in interface will force changes all the way down the technology stack. The query information of a voice driven search will likely be different than for text searches.
Peter: The average query will be longer.
Question: What are the implications for search marketers?
Larry: The most exciting opportunities will be as mobil advertising starts to open up. Today it’s a niche.
Peter: Mobile has a tiny screen, so you may not have room for an ad, if you’re going to give the searcher what they want. The ad may have to be served later.
Question: How smart can search get in the next fve years?
Peter: We’re just getting started, and there’s a lot on which we can get better. Such as actually understanding the content. We’re just getting into other media.
Larry: I wonder how much the initial SERP will evolve. A lot of it will come back to users being more sophisticated. Much will be around the user experience.
Brad: How much more effective is the coupling between user and machine going to become? This will make the difference.
Question: Are we expecting too much from users?
Larry: For the last fifteen years, search has been horizontal. Even today, most of the searches are navigational queries. Most page views, however, are within vertical websites.
Question: Speaking of verticals, local search has been held out as the most promising of verticals for some time, but frankly it’s still horrible. What are the problems preventing local search from being good?
Peter: We have to get the content.
Brad: The mom and pop shops need to understand that this is an option.
Peter: One of you guys in the audience needs to come up with a model where a high school student walks down the row of businesses, knocks on their doors, and convinces them that they can help the company become listed.
Question: One can argue that if you truly do improve search algorithms to the point where users get everything they need, there may not be room for advertisers. How will they co-exist?
Brad: There are a lot of economic reasons for that balance to be maintained.
Peter: The advertisers have to provide something of value, that meet the users’ needs.
Question: I want to touch on personalization a bit. We’ve heard that personalization is really hard, and it seems that Google may have backed off a bit from it. How good does it have to be to improve on where we are now?
Peter: Most times people are searching for something new. Personalization won’t help with this. It will help with certain tasks. We’ll see it be more fragmented.
Brad: The challenge of personalization is that you have to have a lot of data about that user, and you have to use it the right way.
Question: With blended search, it seems that search marketers have less and less influence over where their ads show. Do you see this increasing?
Peter: I see this as an opportunity. You can push more types of content via advertising.
Brad: Things will become more like advertising on a regular webpage. It will be a more rich experience. Except that the intent will be more clear.
Question: What area is particularly of interest to you when you look at the interface between humans and the internet?
Peter: The biggest area is the mobile space and figuring out how we get away from being chained to the desktop.
Question: Five years from today, what one technology would you like to have working?
Larry: For me, the one thing would be allowing people to search in more of a vertical way.
Peter: I want to focus on the user experience.
Brad: I want to have access to search everywhere. When you leave the desktop and get in your car, you want to have access to the same functionality.
