The Pretender

WolframAlpha is “an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine would”. With that in mind this young pretender turns in to a no hoper if you were planning to do conventional queries. But where it comes in to its own specific data related queries or referencing. One of the weird ones is the ISBN barcode

Yes that’s right. It’s pulled up the corresponding barcode for the ISBN number. I’m not sure this will leave any of the search engines quaking in their boots.

A Familiar Friend

Nevertheless moving on to another new but familiar friend we have Bing who also made a splash in 2009. Bing is the new search engine from Microsoft that was formerly known as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search.

Just like with their names Microsoft keep trying to improve their search engine. However apart from the name changing Microsoft have made an effort to bring something new to its service. First of all the ever changing homepage image which has always impressed me each time I see it. Another is how Bing now organises search results into categories. For instance typing in Margret Thatcher will allow you to see the normal set of results on the right hand side but on the left there are options to delve in to more relevant and related results such as the ones listed below:

Not to be left out Yahoo! made a deal with Microsoft that would mean Bing would power Yahoo! Search. This all being said Google has pretty much owned this year and not just because of the size of the power house search engine but the developments they have put live.

Here Comes Google

The Vince update that boosted big brand websites within Google SERP’s was the cause of much conversation here as iCrossing UK. Liz Ayers and David Peiris did some fantastic analysis trying to unravel how Google might be using it’s algorithm to display this SERP’s . I’d advise you to take some time out and have a good read of it.

Caffeine was another update that was more focused on upgrading the engine of Google rather than the enhancements of the algorithm. Matt Cutts explains on the Webmaster Central blog that “The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results” and that this update is “the first step in a process that will let Google (us) push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Google Social Search is a personal favourite of mine and is an experiment featured in Google Labs.  Basically “Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results.” Right now in Brighton it’s snowing so a quick search shows this for the term ‘snow’

The content areas that Google uses can be broken down in to three areas (Web Search Help):

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles.
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles.
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions.

To find this content Google uses your social circle. “The following people make up your social circle:

• People you’re connected to through social services that you’ve listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed.
• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list.
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups for Google.

It’s all very logical, simple in it’s idea but very clever and useful. If you want to find out more try watching MattCutts (with his lovely shiny Minority Report looking head, sorry Matt I couldn’t resist.)

Google Social Search was a step in to the Social Web but was then later followed by real time search. Amit Singhal a Google Fellow goes on to explain what this means for the end user.

“..Immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before”

Of course the main difference between Social search and Real time search is that latter is focused on topic, trending and drawing content from sources that will predominately feature outside your social circle. Not stopping there Google’s personalisation that was only available to users who had Google accounts changed its policy and made it available signed-out users worldwide using a 180 day cookie. This means the traditional ranking factors that Google uses to rank still are valid. However in your day to day searching your frequently visited sites will be more prominent in your search results where relevant.  This has caused a real stir in the SEO community but like always this is yet another opportunity for the digital community to come together and provide digital strategy as opposed to single channel marketing.

Well that’s what caught my eye in 2009. It’s been a very challenging year for us all and will be the year that saw social come in to its own. I wish you the very best of luck in 2010 and I leave you with this final link that made me smile.

What’s the one thing about social media that you know now that you wish you’d known a year ago?

I’m a PR man by trade, and no one ever went into PR because they were good at maths. So the fact that I have become an evangelist for analytics and data in communications programmes over the past year is a bit of a shock, even to myself.

The most important thing I’ve learned in the last year – so I guess I would like to have learned it earlier if I could have done – is that to develop strategy for brands in social media you need numbers and stories in equal measure. And when you are developing programmes thinking about how you will measure is as, if not more important than creative concepts.

It was around November last yar when my colleague Jason Ryan joined the iCrossing team to lead on data analysis and user experience and at about the same time I saw a Forrester presentation about under-used analytics data was by business. Combining our approaches in social media qual research with this data driven approach has accelerated everything we do related to social media both in terms of understanding networks better and developing new services for clients.

Who or what has been your social media hero/villain of 2008 and why?

Dell continues to be my hero brand in social media. Why? Because they are continuing to evolve their marketing and business strategy as a result of engaging in networks. Andy Lark, their Global VP of Marketing says social media’s the most important thing Dell is doing right now. Dell’s an inspiration to me and continues to be so.

In terms of individuals, Clay Shirky’s my hero of the year. His book Here Comes Everybody was a great pulling together of ideas about how the social web is changing everything.

Brands need to stay ahead of the game in social media – what three pieces of advice would you give a brand for 2009?

We have three rules in the iCrossing social media team which we think of as the starting point for all brands:

1. Understand your networks: Where are the networks of people and communities online that are important to you? How do they work individually and as a whole?
2. Be useful to your networks: How can you be a legitimate part of the networks that matter to you? What value can you add by listening, conversing, creating etc?
3. Be live in your networks: Be present, be adaptive. understand how your online world is evolvig and be prepared to adapt and change accordingly.

What are the big technology trends that will shape social media in 2009?

Mobile web: iPhone – and most likely Android – are going to become more important. New uses of the social web and new services will arrive as a result.
Location based services: This is a particular element which is set to rapidly evolve social media and related services.

Broadband tenure: The steady progress of more and more people having broadband at home for longer means that numbers of people engaging with social media in more sophisticated ways will grow.