The Future of Internet Search: Searching for Search Supremacy

Today, “surfing the Web” is unthinkable without first “searching the Web”. Remarkable new search technologies help Google, Yahoo, Verity, Ask Jeeves, Kaidera and others spread their influence far and wide across the Internet.

The Answering Machine

Search has become essential for locating diverse content across large organizations. Much more than just a simple query and response mechanism, search technologies allow content to be more intuitive, smart and personalized. In fact, search technologies already are revolutionizing the way big repositories of information are organized, stored and retrieved. Large-scale software applications such as content management systems, enterprise portals, collaboration tools, and customer relationship management systems are embedding these new search techniques into their core capabilities.

Smart Search is the next wave. Making search algorithms smarter and faster, using intelligent ontologies to understand concepts, processing natural language, real-time indexing and performance clustering - these areas are all part of the innovation pushing the Internet’s “answer machines” to the next level.

No One but You

Personalizing search to suit a user’s specific needs has also become important. But personalization is very hard to get right. It can turn off the user if not accurate or if it’s perceived to be coercive. Yet if it can be made to work, the benefits are palpable. Imagine your very own Google - all of Google’s rankings of page popularity and relevance are tailored instantly to just your interests. No longer must “one suit fit all”. The searcher obviously benefits but so does the search provider: the prize is an ever larger share of the $6-8B targeted advertising market.

The God of Search

Google is today’s God of Search. So far, Google has done the best job of balancing user trust and providing relevant results to maintain very high search quality.

The popularity of Google has provided healthy competition for others in the business. Both Yahoo and Microsoft have woken up to the fact that people increasingly turn to Google for its simple design and focused search results. Google’s success has spurred all major portals and navigation sites to invest in better search technology as well as to promote search-targeted ad sales.

A reinvigorated Yahoo, which was using Google as its search engine until last year, has acquired competitor Inktomi and has committed nearly $2 billion to a Google counterattack. Yahoo, which has about 25 percent of the U.S. market, wants to avoid losing users to other sites with better search technologies and wants, as well, to market premium services, based on the perceived interests of the individual, to those who stay.

Even, Microsoft is investing a significant portion of its $49 billion war chest to build a better search engine. Microsoft is reducing its reliance on third-party providers such as Inktomi and LookSmart, which had been its Web search partners. As part of this investment, the company is adding new staff and enhancing its own navigation technologies.

Meanwhile, Google has formed a close relationship with AOL, solidifying its anti-Microsoft alliance. Who says the search industry is not working overtime? In the search for Search Supremacy, we’ll all benefit from better, quicker answers to life’s persistent questions, or at least to those that can be posed with a keyboard and a mouse.