Can Blekko be a Disruptor in Search?

Blekko is a new search engine currently in private beta, and I have been playing with it for the past few days. Co-founder Rich Skrenta says upfront that Blekko is not a Google-killer, and I agree. However, for a few search enthusiasts to begin with, it is a very interesting Google alternative to come up in many years.

Blekko Search

If you are unfamiliar with Blekko, read this introductory article by Mike Arrington. For a detailed look, read this in-depth review by Danny Sullivan.

A SlashTag For Techmeme Leaderboard

I wanted to have a handy way to search all the websites that make up the Techmeme Leaderboard. It turned out to be simpler than I thought. A straight import of the OPML file helped create my “/TMTop” slashtag that I could use to get quality search results for anything related to technology.

For generic search terms like “credit card”, the difference between search results from Google and Blekko is obvious:

Google Credit Card

Blekko Credit Card for TMTop

Higher Relevance With Curated Search

When comparing approaches to filtering for relevance, I noted how Google search is built almost entirely on algorithms, with minimal human intervention directly on search results. Being a monopoly in the search business, Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that its search algorithm is fair and impartial with no human bias.

Blekko turns this principle upside-down, by giving end users the ability to curate their search. This mix of human + algorithmic filtering leads to potentially very high relevance of search results. Why potentially?

Keyword vs. Slashtag

Consider an example. Let’s say I’m searching to troubleshoot problems with iTunes on a Windows PC. The key question is: can Blekko’s “iTunes problems /windows” perform better than Google’s “iTunes problems windows”? The answer, at present, is no. Google’s first result is Apple’s official support site for iTunes on Windows, while Blekko doesn’t include www.apple.com as part of its “/windows” slashtag.

In fact, at present, even a plain search for “iTunes problems windows” without any slashtag on Blekko doesn’t return the Apple support site in the first few results.

These are difficult challenges for Blekko. Slashtags may not be as effective as you might think. This is because curation is an either-or affair – there is no ‘maybe’ as there can be deep inside an algorithm.

Combining Social Features with Search

Blekko has added social features by enabling you to “follow” other users’ slashtags. This means those who can aggregate a carefully curated set of websites within a slashtag stand a chance of being followed by several other users. This sounds appealing as anything social does these days.

But a reality check: who makes “following” popular on the web? Celebrities and Websites/Blogs whose primary objective is driving traffic to their own content. A slashtag may be a curator’s achievement, but it drives traffic to various sites by definition. Thus, I don’t see any popular brands, celebrities, or content creators to drive the social features of Blekko, hence I suspect it will remain restricted to the minority of search enthusiasts.

Impact on SEO: Slashtag Optimization (STO)?

Will Blekko’s human curation mean that algorithm-focused SEO will suffer? That largely depends on market share of Blekko’s adoption. Greg Sterling has a nice post discussing this issue.

Imagine being able to set default slashtags in your search preferences that filter content farms, adult websites, etc. Search will get a boost in effectiveness of several orders of magnitude. This, coupled with the transparency Blekko brings to the table about its internal SEO metrics, is one of the best things to happen in search, in my opinion.

Even if a minority of search enthusiasts adopt Blekko, I see two possibilities:

  • Google may tweak its algorithm to penalize content farms, as is being suspected
  • Google may offer tools to filter the web in its own searches

In my opinion, if either of these happen, Blekko has proved to be disruptive.

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10 Questions for Google’s “Head of Social”

GigaOm reports that Google is looking to recruit a “Head of Social”. I welcome the move and present a few questions Google should be asking of its new hire:

  1. In 2008 and 2009, we let people believe that iGoogle was our social platform. In 2010, we placed all our bets on Buzz. Is there any way we can integrate iGoogle and Buzz?
  2. What should be Google’s ONE social homepage? iGoogle? Buzz? Profile Page?
  3. What do we do with Google Friend Connect? We need an answer.
  4. How do we leverage Google Social Graph API?
  5. We added social sharing features as an afterthought to Google Reader. Later we invented Buzz. Now, Buzz largely consists of Google Reader shares, where you can easily comment and like them. Except that you can’t share from Buzz to other networks, like you can do in Reader.
    We need clarity on how to move forward with these products so that there’s no overlap and distinct product roadmaps.
  6. We realize that Facebook wouldn’t have grown to its present gigantic size without frivolous but sticky apps like quizzes and games. Stuff like this can be added as gadgets on iGoogle, but not on Buzz.
    We need to consider where and how we can provide sticky apps that attract mainstream users.
  7. How do we let developers monetize their apps for our social platform?
  8. We have a millions of people using Orkut in Brazil and India. How do we consolidate these into the Buzz umbrella?
  9. What incentive do we provide web publishers to use our social platform? Can we leverage our core search results page to highlight results from our social platform?
  10. Facebook is a one-stop-shop for discussions (Buzz), photos (Picasa), videos (YouTube), friend network (Profiles/Orkut), and sharing (Reader). We are all over the place, with a different set of active users of each product. How do we consolidate all of them?

These questions may sound tough and embarrassing. I hope they’re not avoided, because Google is in a tough and embarrassing position. A blind-folded approach isn’t going to help. And we desperately need Google to challenge Facebook.

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Tracking the Google vs. Facebook Race

On this blog, I have been keenly observing the race between Google and Facebook towards a relevant real-time, opining earlier that Google Social Search is likely to win in the long run.

New developments in this race:

This race is not about reading news, but whether you spend more time searching on Google or browsing Facebook. It is about whether you seek out information on the web, or prefer to consume interesting content shared by your friends.

Opinions from the blogosphere lie at both ends of the spectrum. Scoble talked about the expanding Google reef with anticipation, while Mark Hopkins asks if we should give up on Google as a social entity. Others reveal Google’s stealth social network and speculate on a Facebook phone. And while this post was being written, Scoble has discussed how Google is taking on both Apple and Facebook and is rooting for them to win.

Google’s Social Challenge

Will Google’s approach to social networking work? Will Google’s SWAT team help? See these 5 observations about the difference between Facebook and Google Social Search. As expected, when it comes to Search, Google has the upper edge in relevancy. But the problem?

Remember the iPad demo? Steve Jobs demoed Facebook, not Google Search. Engagement on social networks is affecting the search business, as Tac Anderson observed. The rest of them use computers because their friends do, and they do that to see what their friends on Facebook are up to, not to search for information on Google.

Another issue with the Google Social Circle is that Facebook and other social networks have conditioned people into adding friends. How do I add a friend to my Google Social Circle? Expect a backlash from some people: “Google doesn’t allow me to choose my friends, or friends of friends”. Google’s Social Circle is a concept that may appeal only to geeks. If users are dissatisfied with their social search results, they’ll turn to Facebook and ask their friends. That will be much simpler than trying to understand and tweak your social circle.

Google is walking on thin ice here, while Facebook is on firm ground.

Facebook’s Challenge?

It is obvious that Facebook has already won the social networking war. It is years ahead of Google in the social race. So has it won the war? Not yet.

Google is years ahead of Facebook in making money and running a steady profitable business.

Why is this important? Because Facebook and Twitter will always be crappy businesses, says the founder of Tripod, Bo Peabody, in a not-surprisingly unpopular post. Risk averse advertisers stick with tried-and-tested search advertising, and are hesitant with social networks where content is not controlled and businesses have to confront real-time negativity. Even high-profile users are complaining about obnoxious ads in social networks.

Who Will Win?

Search vs. Discovery, Seeking Information vs. Following People, are all different terms for the same two sides of the coin. My take is that both will continue to remain important and popular ways of accessing the web. This leaves room for both Facebook and Google to coexist and profit.

Facebook has a long way to go before it is a sustainable business, while Google has a long way to go in the social web. I am on Google’s side, because I distrust Facebook (for e.g. it’s non-portable data portability), and support Google’s SWAT team.

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Optimize Google & Google Reader for Widescreen in Chrome

If you are using a widescreen monitor with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10, you will notice that Google Search and Google Reader waste most of the screen real estate on the right side.

Here are two extensions for Google Chrome that you might find useful.

Dual-Pane Google Search

The searchw Chrome Extension creates a partition on the right, in which you can preview the results of your Google Search. Effectively, it turns your Google Results into a kind of Table of Contents and the experience is like viewing PDF files.

searchw Chrome extn

You can open a result in a new tab and reduce/enlarge the frame sizes. It also comes with hotkey support.

Google Reader for Widescreen

This Greasemonkey script for making Google Reader widescreen-friendly was earlier made popular by Gina Trapani at Lifehacker for Firefox. With native support for Greasemonkey, it now works like a charm in Google Chrome.

Google Reader Default

Google Reader Widescreen

The best part of this script is that it works automatically in the background requiring no user interaction at all.

If you’re using a widescreen monitor, do check these out.

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What Does Google Suggest About iPad?

It’s too early, but here’s a sign of what’s coming:

Google on iPad

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The Race Towards A Relevant Real-Time

I have written earlier about the advantage Google has over Facebook in achieving relevance in real-time. There have been many interesting developments since:

Looking at these developments together, it is clear that both Facebook and Google want to become indispensable by providing you with relevant information in real-time.

This race is becoming a war. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had mentioned a “shift from an information economy to a social economy”. Mike Arrington clearly understands this war, as he asked Google’s VP Marrissa Mayer about moving from search to discovery of content via social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Quite predictably, Mayer talked about Google Social Search and Real-Time search in response.

My thoughts:

Facebook is on a quest for Searchability, Google is on a quest for Relevancy. Facebook has already pocketed relevancy with its social network, while Google has already pocketed search. Real-time is no longer a technological challenge.

Google is taking an algorithmic approach to social relevancy. Google’s personalized search results and enhancements to Google Suggest reveal its algorithmic approach to finding relevance in the absence of its social network. Because you do not have friends in Google, it is using your browsing patterns, Twitter follows, and search patterns of billions of its users to ascertain what may be socially relevant to you.

Steve Rubel predicted that Google will start promoting Google Profiles heavily. In the meantime, with personalized search results, Google has a stealth profile of everyone already.

Facebook keeping Friend Lists private may be to retain its exclusive access to your social graph, rather than a response to privacy criticism. Facebook must realize that if it hands over your social graph to public search engines, Google will have a huge lead in this race. I suspect that its retraction has more to do with continuing to be a strategic player in this race, and less with privacy. At the minimum, Facebook should expect significant financial benefits out of sharing Friend List information.

Twitter wants to be equated with real-time information. With Twitter opening up its data, expect Facebook apps to work with Twitter. Search engines are already integrating Twitter like mad. Whether you are a user, search engine, application or developer, Twitter wants to be your real-time channel. Kent asked why does Real Time always equate to Twitter? Because that’s exactly what Twitter wants to be.

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Why Google Social Search Will Beat Facebook

There has been a lot of excitement over Google introducing Social Search as an experimental feature in Labs. Facebook COO Sandberg is also often quoted in this context, saying that “the web is moving from an information economy toward a social economy”. It is clear that both Google and Facebook want to be the platform that brings you relevant search results from people you trust. Who will win this battle?

Google SocialGraph API

Let us discount Microsoft and Bing for the moment, as they’re yet to catch up with Google in any case. Marshall Kirkpatrick over at the ReadWriteWeb says no one is the clear winner, but Facebook may have the strongest hand. On the other hand, Robert Scoble says Facebook is the biggest loser in the Twitter search deals.

Among the several factors at play here, such as who has the larger user base, the most important are Relevancy and Recency. Social Search will not be useful unless it is also Real-Time, and Real-Time Search will not be useful unless it is filtered by Social Relevancy.

Today, I follow several people on various social networks, who make up my “social circle”. The problem is not everyone uses the same social network for the same purpose. I follow some people on Google Reader as they share great content there, but I don’t follow them on Twitter, because they tweet mundane stuff I don’t care about. And vice versa.

This is just an example. The point is, a social contact or friend in one network doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a relevant contact in another network. Today, I have the flexibility of deciding whether a friend is a worthwhile contact to connect on Twitter, Google Reader, YouTube, LinkedIn, Disqus, Digg/StumbleUpon, Goodreads, Last.fm, and so on. Facebook doesn’t give me this flexibility. Making friends on Facebook means I get noise from all the social activity of a contact, much of which may not at all be relevant to me.

Now consider Google Social Search. Because I follow different people in different social networks, Google knows not just who matters to me, but when and in what context. A friend I follow on Goodreads is relevant when I am searching something about books, but irrelevant when I am searching for breaking tech news. Google has the intelligence to apply relevancy to my social search. Facebook doesn’t.

Facebook Groups may try to emulate these different social networks, but I don’t think it likely that they can achieve the rich functionality developed by each of them for specific networks like books, music, etc.

Human beings on earth did not coalesce into one gigantic country, but segregated into multiple countries with their own culture and language. Eric Schmidt says that within five years, the Internet will be dominated by Chinese language content. We humans are social indeed, but not to the extent that we all congregate within one gigantic silo. Social networks on the web ultimately reflect social networks in real life. Google’s platform understands and accepts that, Facebook doesn’t. That’s why Google will not just remain relevant in the “social economy”, it has clear advantages over Facebook in winning the battle.

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RSS: Really Smart Search

There has been a lot of discussion lately regarding whether people use RSS to track news. Rob Diana has summed up the discussion well in RSS, Human Filters and Real Time Streams.

What I am interested in is not tracking breaking news but being able to search for relevant information. Alex at ReadWriteWeb had pontificated about Social Relevancy Ranking in search results.

This is becoming increasingly important for me. Google search has no human filter, no personal trust factor. Alex Campbell writes about the stark realization that he doesn’t depend upon Google anymore to find stuff, where he describes how SEO has diminished Google’s relevancyGoogle Reader

Marshall Kirkpatrick had designed a Custom Google Search (“Marshall’s Magic Search”) that I have used quite a lot, until recently. Now, I find that my Google Reader gives me better results.

How and why?

  • Following the right people. This is the most challenging aspect, as Rob Diana says in his post. There is no built-in auto-discovery feature based on relevancy and not popularity. If the Facebook suggested friends feature could be applied to Google Reader, it would be one approach. But once you follow the thought leaders and influencers in your sphere of interest, you have already made your Google Reader search several relevancy levels higher than Google and dismissed SEO garbage and popularity noise in one fell swoop.
  • The beauty of RSS subscriptions is that searching feeds can go back indefinitely in time. This means in a feed reader like Google Reader, you can get search results from people (feeds) you follow even before you started following them. So if you subscribe to Louis Gray’s shared feed, you can search his “wisdom archives” so to speak, even if you didn’t know him till now.
  • You can get feeds from social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg if you want to add popularity as a factor in your search.
  • Organizing your feeds using folders and tags. This comes in very handy so that you can search selectively based on your folders and tags.
  • Using Starring. Many people do not use the Star feature in Google Reader. I use it as if they were my bookmarks.

Can Google Reader replace Google? No, since at present, Google Reader shows results in chronological order, supports primitive search operators and wildcards, and does not use a relevancy algorithm. There are simple limitations like needing to enclose a phrase in parenthesis and so on.

Steve Rubel has also highlighted the use of Google Reader as a database in his recent post. The effectiveness of the tool depends on how effectively you use it. The smarter you are, the smarter your Google Reader search results. There’s an indispensable human filter involved – and that is you.

However, these are limitations of the feed reader, not of RSS. Since it has a large user base, it is difficult for the Google Reader team to accelerate development of new features. On the other hand, new startups like LazyFeed and Toluu have developed an astonishing service within a very short time span. It might take these new services lesser time to add powerful search functions based on social rankings and personal follow lists. Marshall has revealed how they use open source software for meme tracking and feed parsing for ReadWriteWeb, including LazyFeed to monitor specific topics.

If these startups are able to capitalize on a smaller early adopter user base and bring smarter search results, do you think they can deliver smarter search results than Google and its Reader?

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