

Is This The Future Of Search? - froo
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/16/is-this-the-future-of-search/

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Tichy
I hope it is not the future of search. There should be a better way, learning
from users actions instead of querying them directly.

In fact I think Google already has these ways, with Google Toolbar, Google
Analytics and Adwords tracking users behaviours among other things.

So I suspect, if this voting stuff comes, it would be more psychological than
technical? Maybe people are happier with a site if they are allowed to "vent".

A bit like the escalator engineers who placed mirrors next to the escalators
so that people would not notice the waiting time so much. It doesn't improve
the technology, but makes people happier.

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cosmok
Well it is good to know that Google is experimenting with Social Search in
this way.

I am very enthusiastic about Social search and even built one (with the same
commenting, voting features).

Wikia is doing the same, so, nothing new about this for people like me, but,
feels great to know that Google is atleast 'experimenting' with social search.

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mariorz
do you think the voting should affect the results?

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cosmok
yeah, sure, otherwise why display that feature?

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froo
I know its been talked about with several threads already, but this is the
first post that has a video of it in action.

So for the many people who are not able to use the new search feature (like
me) - this is a great help to visualise where Google is trying to take it.

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tigerthink
This could be quite awesome. Only thing is, I have a hunch the comments will
be of Youtube quality.

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froo
The only thing that worries me about the voting functionality is how this will
work in regards to SEO - specifically people spamming with votes for less
relevant search results in their various niches. I have no doubt that this
kind of voting will work for broad terms, but would be less valuable in very
specific keyword phrases which only get few searches.

What would be fantastic is if Google could weight these votes based on how
"alike" the person voting for it is to me.

EG, if I was interested in say, Kung Fu and Knitting, and there were other
people interested in Kung Fu and Knitting, then the options that they vote for
would be more relevant to me than someone who was doing SEO work on those
various sites. So hopefully those would rank higher.

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mariorz
could this possibly be a joke?

