Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Fionn Downhill, CEO and President, Elixir Systems
Yahoo had to go, family emergency. So first up is...
Phil McDonnell, Software Engineer, Google, Inc. is first up. Google uses web history, it is great at disambiguating what the searcher wants. It finds results most relevant for a user and provides subtle ranking changes. He explains they are not going to drastically change the search results, it won't be "crazy" he said.
Web history policies: - Transparency - allows users to view data stored - They do not currently use Gmail, Orkut data in web history - Security - enables user privacy through secure login - Control - empowers users to selectively include and exclude data - Portability - gives users ultimate control to transport their data anywhere
Marketing to Personalized Search: - Create compelling and interesting content - Appeal to users instead of search engines by finding your niche and bring the right result to the right user - Simplifies search experience - Simplifies marketing needs - Changes are subtle so SEOs do not need to rethink marketing plans
Working With Personalized Results: - Sign out of Google to get non personalized results - Or append &pws=0 to the end of the URL and it will turn it off for that search
Steven Marder, CEO and Co-founder, Eurekster is next up. He explains what they do, Swickis. :) Not going to give the sales slide here, I suspect most of you know what they do, if not, check out their site.
Social Search Widgets: - Swicki customized widget - Surfaces community activity / user generated content including popular, suggested and recent terms - Drives grabbing and sharing through widget distribution - Multimedia search capabilities and tags - Drives user engagement - Increases search activity and query traffic
He then shows examples of this in action.
He then shows examples of Search 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0.
Social Search: - Social media meets search - Algo plus humans - Blend of intent driven search and discovery - Publisher guided, community sharing - Community...
For Marketers: - Leverages key characteristics of social media - He is flying...
Challenges: - Should they apply the social graph to this? - Trusted relationship or expert source guide? - High quality content via UGC? - How can publishers get a feedback loop?
The Search 4.0 landscape is about the progression to a customer search area. They leverage the power of search to discovery tools.
They are rolling out the Eurekster SERP 4.0 page. He then brings up a demo.
They are learning as they go but content is king and deepening the user relationship will really help.
Cris Pierry, Senior Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search was unable to make it. So Chris Sherman talks a bit about what Yahoo is doing. They have delicious, yahoo search builder, yahoo shopping has a pinpoint search feature, they announced open search a couple days ago.
