How Else Can You Search? New Trends in Internet Search

Anurag Dod, CEO, Guruji.com
Someone once said that the key to building a great search engine is simple. ‘Create a great engine that can search for useful content and obtain relevant links’. This was easier said than done in the past, but today with the world witnessing technological breakthroughs in the field of internet search and web crawlers, not just this but much more can be accomplished by internet search companies.

The concept of ‘Search’ as we know is getting redefined as the domain itself is getting more competitive. If users don’t find the information that they are looking out for on more than a couple of occasions, it is very much possible that they will consider using an alternative option which provides more specific results.

The usability of a search engine is clearly defined by how useful and relevant the search results are to a user and not by random results thrown up for a particular search query. It is this primary need or demand expressed by more and more users which has forced companies to work in newer areas such as vertical search. Vertical search (a sharp contrast to the more commonly used broad-based search e.g. finance search) has witnessed rapid growth and increasing adoption over the past few years. This remains to be an area where companies will continue to spend on R&D purely due to the various options that can still be explored and brought to reality.

One of the latest techniques that vertical search engines use and will be in focus is the concept of a ‘Live search’. Live search or real-time search enables the user to search for up to date posts and conversations, which are going to be refreshed per second, at the social web nearly in real-time. Real-time web search -- which scours only the latest updates to services like Twitter -- is currently generating quite a buzz because it can provide a glimpse of what people around the world are thinking or doing at any given moment.

A recent research done by a leading internet search company suggests that real-time results could be even more powerful -- they may be able to reveal the future. For example, automobile manufacturers can forecast projected sales of cars and vehicle parts, by extrapolating the sales figures for the previous month and the same month last year. Adding in the volume of automobile-related search queries to this forecast model can cut the error rate by 15 per cent.

Another trend that vertical search engines bring to the table is the use of ‘Semantic Search’. Semantic search is going to raise the bar of usability for users, as they will no longer have to type the exact keywords for what they are looking for, but only an easier similar word, or phrase or an ‘idea’ of what they are looking for will suffice. For instance, Powerset, a search engine in America is in the process of building a natural language search engine that reads and understands every sentence on the Web. Users will also be able to search for information in the form of a question pertaining to what information they are looking for. This can certainly improve search results in a country such as India where English is not the predominant language. Our experience shows that most Indians think in their regional language and in most cases, search queries are classic examples of transliteration results of that kind of thinking.

Another trend, which is going to be huge, is the concept of ‘speech recognition’. A user could log into an online search provider, use a microphone to ask a question aloud, or just say some key phrases, and get a list of results back immediately.

The manner in which one searches for a particular piece of information varies from one user to another, but a search engine’s success lies in capturing the intent of these users and showing relevant results. All users search for information online with an intent to find exactly what they are looking for effortlessly and search engines are making this form of usability their top priority. Say you are searching for a particular brand online using a particular search engine. Search engines will be able to predict whether you are looking to buy a product or just find information about the company or product. This ‘intent-driven search’ is still in a very early phase, but it promises to be an exciting option for mainstream users.

Another realm that search engines are trying to focus on these days is in trying to engage all forms of media and giving a more variant result to your search. So if a user is trying to search for something, he will not only get the usual text results but also images, videos, blog articles and other media forms pertaining to that search.

The future definitely seems exciting for all those online companies and the millions of internet users. And we are not far off from that day when the internet will know what one will do next.