You care about the top 10 results more that anything else Google serves. As searcher if there are 100,000 or 1,000,000 results beyond the top 20 it really doesn’t matter. Top 20 is good enough.
A while back I wrote about Google’s PPC model needs to evolve or slowly deteriorate. Inevitably customers always want and need better services. Advertisers want more. Search at this point is the middle man that either needs to be cut out of the equation or evolve into something better.
Back when I wrote that article, there was nothing tangible yet that could be a threat to Google. The scenery was starting to blend together. It looked like social networks were obviously and without a doubt using AdSense (or competitor’s products) to advertise to their audiences. MySpace and Facebook did not have strong monetization strategies and search was 110% king and queen of the internet neighborhood. Exit strategies for start-ups like JOT or writely were targeted to Google.
Fast forward to today.
Google is slowly losing its relevance to the real time and social web. A web where people manage the information they want to find and that rely on each other to find the best (or silliest depending on purpose) possible content on the web on near real-time. Now, say Twitter together with me.
Arguably, Twitter has been able to quickly build the most active, distributed and addictive set of third party applications via its API. Most importantly, cheaper that Google ever did. Beyond this point, there is a very interesting and potentially troubling trend for Google, taking place in search. Real time, trust worthy recommendations made relevant by time. People by nature trust recommendations made by people they know or respect. These recommendations factor in making decisions about the biggest purchases and actions in their lives. Think choosing a college, buying a car, shopping for baby clothes and choosing the best school. To solidify my choices I talk to people I know and read people I respect. That is what makes me decide one way or the other. As John Borthwick, CEO of BetaWorks points out in his blog, relevancy is driven mostly by time.
This means that a search engine that syndicates what people are saying about a product in real time is more valuable than 1,000,000 hits in Google, even if I only look at the top ten. I trust people that I know and respect and if these people are praising or bashing a product or service, I am very likely to listen to them rather than to a search engine. To quote John again, Google.com has suddenly become the source for pages — not conversations, not the real time web. You can’t reply to a classic search engine result. You can reply to Twitter search and expect a real time often thoughtful reply in return.
Resources:
Google Next Victim Of Creative Destruction? (GOOG)
LikeRelated posts:
What makes (real-)time so relevant for product search? Generally, it doesn’t matter if someone says something about some product a second, a day, a month, or sometimes even a year ago.
“People by nature trust recommendations made by people they know or respect.”
If that’s the case, don’t you think relevancy is driven mostly by trust rather than time?
Relevance is driven by trust within a time frame – especially for product searches . It doesn’t matter what a trusted source says if that information does not get to you the moment you need it. I don’t care about what Robert Scoble said about a service or product I am thinking about using a year ago. I want to know what he thinks right now. He’s a respected and trustworthy source and the latest information needs to get to me when I needed.
Relevance depends on recency and authority.
Timeliness is important for product search, but my pt is that real-time usually doesn’t matter. I don’t need product opinions within seconds of them being created. Within minutes or hours (or days, or even weeks or months in some cases) is fine. I’d rather get Robert Scobles 12 hour old opinion of a tech product than Billy’s 12 second old opinion. So I agree, “relevance is driven by trust within a time frame,” but that time frame is almost never required to be real-time.
You are correct: That is why I said “near real-time”. Also I mentioned authority. I also rather have Robert Scoble’s 12 hour old commentary than Billy’s 20 second old.
“Google is slowly losing its relevance to the real time and social web. A web where people manage the information they want to find and that rely on each other to find the best (or silliest depending on purpose) possible content on the web on near real-time
Nicely thought out point. "Real time, trust worthy recommendations made relevant by time." Twitter can very quickly calculate how many times in the last 24 hours a user has twitted about "AT&T". If we equate twits to links (the google holy grail) then AT&T moves up the search ladder … but how do we know whether people are twitting positively or negatively about AT&T? When I do a search on twitter, it returns a mishmash of thoughts. When somebody figures out how categorize twits and them fold that into a search algorithm, then I think you are on to something.
The problem is with twitter is people aren't actively seeking out the links and prepared to buy the products even with trust. It maybe great for brand awareness if you can get enough people twittering. However, with google when search is used for example for a particular shoe we'd be able to find out what we need immediately. It's like comparing a sales person getting a lead by knocking on each persons door vs. a customer coming in to the store already knowing they want something of that sort.