Dana notes a decrease in the quality of Google’s searches; I’ve noticed many of the same things, and have tried to switch to Ask or Yahoo; I even tried MSN.
In the end I came back to Google; the main reason: Google is just so much faster than the others. It sounds dumb, but it makes a big difference.
A few weeks back I was meandering around the Baltimore Craigslist gigs board and came across a posting for a Ruby on Rails position for “a newly funded startup in the Audio/Video Podcasting Arena,” which piqued my interest. The ad states that the startup “will be acquiring a very large presence in the Audio Podcasting space,” and many of the details seemed to point to Odeo, so I was suspicious that Odeo had found a new home. After reading today’s announcement of Odeo’s sale to SonicMountain, it was confirmed.
As for the future plans for Odeo, the ad mentions:
We are going to be enhancing the site with video podcasting and podcast hosting features as well as a patent-pending search system for audio, video and podcast content. The search development is being performed by a company under a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and we have used offshore development for the video conversion engine (.mp3, .mp4, .mov, etc) into Flash (.flv), a custom flash player and the CC billing module for hosting and the podcast hosting / management engine.
Sounds interesting; I think there’s definitely room for a more complete solution for podcast hosting and metrics; I currently use a combination of Ourmedia.org, FeedBurner, Podtrac and Performancing Metrics; if there were a way to tie some or all of that together, it would be very interesting.
And very interesting to me is that the contact listed on the ad is based in Baltimore; the question is: Is Odeo coming to Maryland?
Meanwhile, Odeo itself has been stagnating for a while; I use their podcast player widget for a podcast I do with my wife, and despite my best efforts (pinging, etc.), Odeo hasn’t updated in about two months. Hopefully the new owners can revive the site.
PC World has a really great article entitled Search Engine Shoot-Out. The article asks the question, “Does Google deserve all that traffic, or is it living off its reputation? Are people using it because they’re not aware of other, potentially better search engines?” What follows is some fairly comprehensive test of search engines across several verticals: web, videos, images, news, blogs, and local info.
I’m very happy and proud to report that Blogdigger finished third in the blog search category; of couse, I’d love to do better, but the fact that we finished where we did, to me, says a lot about what Mike and I have been working towards. I’ve written more of my thoughts on the Blogdigger blog, so hop on over and check it out.
The main take-away from the article is, of course: Google is king of search. Their web search results are probably the most frequently viewed single page on the web, and they have strong entries in all the other major categories as well. It would appear to be almost a fools-errand to even consider taking them on. On the other hand, as the article points out, only a few years ago Google didn’t exist and Alta Vista was the king of web search. And as YouTube has shown, it’s entirely possible to enter a market and create a community that can rival even Google’s offerings, and Wikipedia has, for many, replaced Google as the go-to resource for factual information. And remember, Google wouldn’t have a blog search if it weren’t for the fact that many of us showed how useful it could be.
I’ve got to think that JK Rowling checked Google before naming her final installment of the Harry Potter series. A search for “deathly hallows” on all the major search engines turns up nothing (I wrote this yesterday, however, as of now, both Yahoo and MSN have results; Google and Ask still yield nothing) . It will be very interesting to watch the spread of this meme, and how quickly and in what fashion it makes it’s way into search engines, both major and minor (the best place to go for info right now, of course, is your favorite blog search engine). Tracking a brand new phrase, especially one as ubiquitous as a this one, provides tremendous insight into the inner workings of a search engine and how it ranks and digests new content. In addition, domain names are already being snatched up (I imagine that the obvious ones were grabbed by the publisher’s even before the announcement was made; I tried to register deathlyhallows.com, but it and all other variants were gone) and advertisers are already bidding on keywords.
A couple of reference links:
The confluence of two events: the deprecation of the Google Search SOAP API and the release of the del.icio.us JSON API, both point to the fact that the vision of the web as a platform is dying. Instead, the success of online advertising, and it’s corallary, the page view, is dominating. So Google limits their search API to only be used on the web, and allows for greater control over how their data is used (and, doesn’t expose data as before). del.icio.us passes over traditional standards for a format which provides functionality that helps drive traffic back to their property while at the same time doesn’t open/expose their platform too much. The paradigm is widgets, which function to promote the host site, rather than allowing data to roam free and find itself reconstituted in new ways.
On the one hand, it makes sense from a business perspective; why should companies freely open up their valuable data stores if they get no benefit from it (an issue we’ve been dealing with for years, since we made all searches on Blogdigger subscribe-able as RSS feeds, and in terms of monetization, it’s been very tricky)? On the other hand, locking up and restricting data to self-promotion vehicles hinders innovation.
In the page view/advertising world, it makes sense it has come to this. But is it a good thing?
Got back from PubCon on Friday. Overall, it was a really good conference. I’ve been focused so much on blogs and social media over the past few years, in some ways I forgot that there is a whole other part of the web that doesn’t care about buzz words or hip technology, but about dollars and cents. It’s been really interesting talking to people who run their own businesses online and hear some of the issues they deal with in making real money online.
The Sessions:
A typical pattern for me at conferences: I begin by going to lots of sessions, then taper off and spend most of my time in the hallways talking to people, and towards the end go back to the sessions. I was a bit disappointed by the sessions at PubCon, I really didn’t find that they were giving me any information I didn’t already know (this includes sessions on topics I know really little about, like things like PPC and SEO). A few of the sessions I attended and my thoughts:
Feeds, Blogs, News and Search: This session was pretty good. Niall Kennedy gave a good overview of some of the technical details behind syndication formats. Rick Klau gave a good overview of some of the applications that consume feeds beyond basic aggregators. Owen Byrne gave an overview of digg, including an interesting tidbit about how many servers they have (about 90, not all for production. I always find it interesting to find out how many servers services are using, as well as their architechture, ‘cuz I think about scalability quite a lot, and love getting hints at how much iron it takes to serve various levels of traffic. We’re doing about 500K searches a day on 3 servers). Chris Tolles gave an overview of Topix. I would have liked to have had more discussion on the basics of syndication, aggregators, etc. I also think it would have been helpful to discuss the role that blogs and feeds play in helping with rankings in the major search engines (like it or not, 90% of your traffic is going to come from Google, not from feed-consuming applications). There’s been a lot of rumors and misinformation about how Google handles feeds, and if they help in optimizing search rankings. Also, based on comments from the folks from the major search engines, a blog sounds like the ideal type of site for getting ranked. Some discussion of this would have been helpful to convey the value of having a blog or feed.
Podcasting and Net Radio 101: A good session. While the session provided some good information, I thought it focused too much on podcasting from a business perspective, overlooking podcasting as content. I’m going to post more about podcasting in the future based on some of my experiences over the last two months, but I will say that, from my experience, promoting a podcast is completely different from promoting a web site. There wasn’t much discussion of iTunes or other community building techniques that work very well for podcasts.
Interactive Site Reivews and SERP Quality Control Forum: This was really cool. The panel included folks from the major search engines (Matt Cutts from Google, Tim Mayer from Yahoo) as well as Danny Sullivan and other search experts. Basically, people from the audience submit their sites to the panel for review, and the panelists tear them a new one (not in a bad way…they are really helpful). It was really informative, and amazing to me how many of these sites were suffering from so many problems that a decent content management system such as Wordpress could take care of in a snap (it’s not just for blogs). Most of the panelists stressed the importance of unique content (this is a big deal for e-commerce sites that post just snippets from databases, and all the sites use the same database), and offered starting a blog as a good way to build unique content. Many other really good tips, some obvious, some based on inside information from Google or Yahoo. Very informative.
All in all, it was a good conference, and I learned a lot, and had a good time (oh, and the Yahoo party, that was fun). If you’re looking for more coverage, check out Search Engine Roundtable for a good summary of the sessions. As for a general overview of the conference, and why I went, Chris Tolles said it best.
On my last trip out west, after the StartupCamp, I had the privilege to be interviewed by Vic from HotfromSiliconValley.com. Vic did a great job getting me to divulge my thoughts on Blogdigger and the general state of web search in general. Take a listen, I’ve even gone into some detail on what is underway here (you didn’t thinkwe’ve been sitting around doing nothing now, did you?).
HotFromSiliconValley is a great podcast, I’ve got it in iTunes; they’ve got great coverage of DemoFall as well as interviews with just about everyone who’s doing something interesting on the web (like the guys from Boompa, a site I like very much). Check it out. Thanks Vic!
Landed in Oakland this morning (well, afternoon for me, but whatever), visited with the family, got back to the hotel, and went looking for what’s going on. Wow. Upcoming.org is pretty much not useful in Baltimore, but for Palo Alto, it’s a goldmine. Here’s a list of stuff going on between now and Thursday (when I head back east):
Amazing; I forgot how much is going on on this coast. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to at least one of these.
If Wikipedia was around when I was in high school, I never would have had to read any of the horrible books they gave us in English class (I’m hoping I still would have read the good ones).
I used to have to hunt around for spoilers of movies I thought looked interesting but didn’t have time or money to see (say, for example, I like the trailer, but there ain’t no way I’m going to shell 9 bucks for another Tom Cruise flick). Now I go to Wikipedia, and 9 times out of 10, someone has summarized the plot for me.
With the all the squabbling going on about Wikipedia vs. Brittanica, et. al., the important point that seems to be left out is that, while there is a threshold for what is considered knowledge in a print reference, there’s no such limitation online. A spoiler detailing the ending of Scorsese’s Casino may not seem like important information to an editor, but why should he make that decision? Especially when it ends after 2AM, and I fell asleep.
On a related note, there are a few sites which represent a threat to Google’s hegemony; Wikipedia is one of them. Wikipedia’s authority, right now, gives it prime ranking in Google, and as more and more people become familiar with it, they will begin to go there first, instead of Google. I now go straight to Wikipedia for all reference based searches, where I am looking for factual information. Expect the rest of the world to begin to do the same. Ironically, it is Google that gave Wikipedia it’s prominence, exposing them to so many people in the first place.
After reading Niall’s post about comScore’s analysis of Technorati’s resent surge in users thanks to MySpace, I did a little research to see how MySpace users were using Technorati, what was drawing them to the site and how were they using it. I haven’t formed any conclusive answers yet, but one thing I did notice, repeatedly, was a complete misunderstanding by MySpace users as to what Technorati actually does (here’s one of many examples). There’s frequent outrage over Technorati “stealing” MySpace’rs content (as one MySpace commenter who obviously knew what was really going on said, “Wait till they find out about GOOGLE!”), and utter confusion and hysteria over the purported ability for anyone to “claim” any blog. Perhaps some of these people will figure it out, in the mean time I can only imagine the head-smacking and virtual throttling going on over at Technorati tech support these days.
Another major concern of many users is privacy, or, more correctly, the shattering of their illusion of privacy. I’ve seen this happen many times with kids finding out adults know of and track their movements online; their initial reaction is, “I know it’s like public and all, but it’s private! It’s MY SPACE!” Most users, typically younger ones, are blissfully unaware that their incoherent musings and bedroom mirror-shots are being viewed, crawled, indexed and archived so that their kids can go back and relive their parents sordid youth. For many of them, Technorati is the first to break this illusion.
Anyways, as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad press, as the comScore report illustrates. But this does bring up a topic I meant to write about a while back, about how the younger generation is, for all intents and purposes, the MySpace generation. So much of what the more sophistacated technical crowd think of as the future of the web (like presence, subscription, content generation/sharing) is all on MySpace, and kids are exposed to these concepts there first (i.e. - they are learning about “subscribing” to other’s blog’s the MySpace way, not the RSS/aggregator way). MySpace has, without asking permission of the Web 2.0 deities, brought many new types of online activities to the masses.