Just read a very interesting article on the future of search. The bottom line for me was pretty clear: Google Search is broken. Several of the core principles behind it are now obviously wrong.
Search is not about getting a list of web pages. The structure of online information is much more complex. If you’re looking for some help on a particular Java library, you wouldn’t expect Google to return you a link to every single page of a 50-page online manual: the whole manual is the information unit you’re looking for. If you’re looking for opinions on a new Wii game, you should expect a list of forums, with for each forum, some insight into how many posts refer to the game, what the overall sentiment is, etc. The posts may be on one same web page, or they may not, and this does not matter.
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Filed under: Search, Social Media by Fabrice Retkowsky
I’m doing some analysis using the public search engines and I’m being presented with a lot of pages that are not what I’m looking for. The date of publication is sometimes wrong when I search over a specific time period, or the information is weak - it takes a couple of minutes of my time to read the 2 lines of a blog in the search results, make the decision to open the page, wait for Firefox to load it properly then read enough of it to realise it’s rubbish and close the tab.
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Filed under: Research, Search, Spam by Giles Palmer
My friend Damian has a 5 year old daughter called Lola. On Saturday, she left her favourite bunny at my house after a visit. They live just down the road from me, so no biggie I thought, I’ll just drop the rabbit round. But first I think I’ll go for a swim at the Gym. The bunny was upstairs, so when I went up to get my swim shorts, I picked it up at the same time. There was some small drama at that point as I couldn’t find my car keys quickly (why didn’t i just put them in the key pot as always?! Argh), but I found them in my jeans pocket, so all’s good. I picked up my towel in which I have wrapped my shorts and goggles and we’re off.
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Filed under: Humour by Giles Palmer
I don’t know about you – but growing up in the UK through the 80’s and 90’s (I wish it was later), I have an in-built love for Marks and Spencer. Yes, it’s true.
Not the Marks and Spencer that is constantly talked about in the financial pages and business sections – but the Marks and Spencer that brought us Chicken Kiev (with real chicken), sandwiches with exotic fillings (like avocado and walnuts!) and stuffing with real fruit (amazing).
Anyone who has watched “The Royle Family” will know what I am talking about. Marks’ (pronounced “Markses”) is revered alongside the Church, “Who wants to be a Millionaire” and the Queen. (more…)
Filed under: Brands, Customer Engagement, Reputation Management, Technology by Dominic Frost
Much has been written about methods of developing software - books and books and blogs and blogs. I love the writing and thinking of Steve McConnell, although some of his observations can be a bit gloomy (top 2 mistakes almost always or often stated are 1 Overly optimistic schedules 77% and, 2 Unrealistic expectations 73%)
And I subscribe to several blogs including Jason Yip’s which has some nuggety insights.
I was at Reboot this year where Eelco Rustenburg gave a great talk on Agile, Software, Management, India collaboration in which he spoke about the benefits of a more agile approach. During his talk something crystallised in my mind.
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Filed under: Software development, Technology by Giles Palmer
I have some data. Not much. Just two rows and a few colums and I want to make a beautiful graph, turn it into a web-friendly image and put it on this blog.
How hard can that be? It turns out, way harder than it should be. One word aarrrgghh (more…)
Filed under: Technology by Giles Palmer
Over the last 30 years, many tasks that humans once performed have been automated, encoded and passed over to computers. It’s the drive for efficiency that Bill Gates still talks about today. The internet however, never started off as a human-powered system so there was nothing to automate. But recently we have been witnessing the emergence of human-powered applications such as Social Search that are in some way competing with fully automated systems.
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Filed under: Quality, Search, Social Media, Spam, Technology by Giles Palmer
According to wikipedia “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.
The second paragraph goes on “Social media use the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video”.
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Filed under: Consumer Generated Media, Public Relations, Social Media by Giles Palmer
Defining brand image as a multi-dimensional entity and working with individual dimensions explicitly has several important benefits, in both practical and conceptual terms.
If by watching a brand we mean the measurement and tracking of its image online, then we need a clear and operational definition of what a brand image is. We propose that a brand’s image is best construed as an aggregate of how that brand is perceived along multiple related topical dimensions. (more…)
Filed under: Brands, Research, Technology by Berkan Eskikaya
Alan Mitchell wrote in Marketing Week last week about online peer-to-peer marketing. The central theme of his article is that it is early days for Marketeers in this space and that the web and p2p or c2c communication is throwing up some answers to questions that haven’t even been asked yet.
I supplied Alan with some of the data he used for the article. I used the Superbrands top 100 UK consumer brands as the starting point and plugged them into Brandwatch and grabbed the data for a week. (more…)
Filed under: Reputation Management by Giles Palmer
