KM World and Enterprise Search 2010: The Evolution of Search
Posted by Bill Ives on Tue, Nov 16, 2010
Here is another in a series of session notes for KM World 2010 and Enterprise Search Summit 2010. I attended the session, The Evolution of Search led by Daniel W. Rasmus, Principal, Daniel W. Rasmus. Here is the description:
“This talk will challenge current assumptions about search and ask hard questions about the future of information management. Although search technologies and strategies have come a long way, search may not be the only answer to our information management needs. Rasmus explores a promising future that includes everything, from proactive algorithms that help information find you, to socially mediated recommendations that turn social networks into information management partners. Unfortunately, search, as we know it, has locked vendors and consumers, information managers and knowledge workers, onto a path that withholds the promise of information management and learning, while optimizing for advertising revenue based on ad placement. It is time to challenge the status quo and demand that vendors start making investments in information management and retrieval that help everyday workers and consumers better achieve their goals.”
Daniel began with a great diagram of his bio. He writes poetry and teaches strategy. He has a new book, Management by Design. Dan said we all love and hate search. Enterprise search is worse than Web search and the expectations are way too low. Enterprise search has promised much and delivered little. There can be great cost savings if search is done right.
We now have to change the conversation and talk about information finding us. Consumer Web search is too focused on ad placement rather than serving searchers. We want the right doc, not the right ad. Searchers also have to get better at asking questions. They have to use more words in their queries.
Search is also expensive. Some research states that every Google search uses lot of electricity, the equivalent of a 100 watt light bulb left on for a day.
Search engines also have to get to know us better. There is a lot of information about our activities that could be used to help with the right content finding us.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has many user interface improvements but there is little new in the way we manage information. There is no visibility into search activities that relevant others are doing in most tools. This would aid coordination and avoid redundancy. This is very doable.
On the Web content wants to be found. SEO is rampant. This is not the case in the enterprise. Version control is also a major issue in the enterprise. This is generally not the case on the Web.
Search now wants to be social. They often do it the old fashion way as there are many sites where you ask other people questions to supplement what you cannot find through search engines. Yahoo answers is one example.
Daniel said that providing demographics does not make great improvements in search results. There is some benefit as men and women, for example, tend to search for different stuff. He gave an example of Wagner the composer (more women) and Wagner power brushes (more men). However, we are past having segmentation make a big difference in search.
Search engines today primarily look at text within content or as he said “you only love me for my body.” There is much more such as tags and other metadata, as well as visuals.
Metrics on search engines can now identify employee behavior and whether it was appropriate. This can be an issue and could be dark.
Dan’s vision for the future: our computer will be smarter when we wake up because it considers stuff while we sleep. This is a nice idea. He closed with idea that we should not let our search vendors keep our expectations low. Good session. It gave us a state of the art and it seems that there is a lot of room for improvement. I would agree and this represents opportunities, especially in the social space. Social media gives us such rich contextual data that should be used to mask search more social and more relevant to the searcher.