The answers my friends- are blowin’in the wind….

Response to Long Tails and Short Queries 

The Christina Wodtke interview with Amanda Spink

Amanda Spink needs to do some reading on human computer interaction and buy an ipod.  During her interview with Christina Wodtke she says, “the best way to encourage richer queries is to train users and expect them to put more effort into their search behavior. Search engines need to put more demands on the users. People don’t understand their own information behaviors, and they don’t really understand much about search or the web, so they will have to learn. It could take generations.”  This statement flies in the face of almost everything else we have learned throughout this semester.  In short, while Spink presents some interesting points I think the crux of her argument is way off base. 

The answer isn’t more training- its better search engines.  People enter one term searches in the first place because they are lazy- and no amount of training is going to change that.  Even Spink’s own research supports this, she found that “few people use advanced search features, and many queries include spelling and other mistakes that adversely affect the search results. People look at only a few result pages—not beyond the first or second results pages.”  This indicates to me that people don’t want to think harder- or receive more training- quite the contrary!  When a user types in the word “camp” they want the summer camp they went to one summer in second grade to appear- and why shouldn’t it!?

The advent of the wearable computer and the ability to record and catalogue one’s life is going to spur the development of more sophisticated searching capabilities.  Key word searches will become customizable, intuitive and personalized, but it won’t be because user’s have gotten smarter or better able to search.  The shift will occur because there will be a market need for it and because technology is now capable.  Much like the only reason we don’t have flying cars now is because the technology isn’t there yet- or because the government won’t let us (conspiracy).  

So the crux of my position- Users don’t need more training- search engines need to be smarter- and do away with all that optimization garbage that allows junk sites to appear legitimate.  Like Wikipedia- search engines should subscribe to the communal model and let the sites with the most number of hits display first- kind of like that site digit which you demonstrated in class.  This way, real sites with helpful information would always show up first and users wouldn’t have to scroll endlessly through all of the hyperlinked selections.

Before this can happen however- search engines need to find what users are looking for much more intuitively.  Many credit card companies and banks use voice recognition to input your data why can’t search engines use thought pattern recognition to connect that when I search for Kimberly Reidy I want the QU student not the apparent medical doctor in Okalahoma… Additionally, search strings, like Amazon, should remember what you last searched for and based off of that information find related topics… I am not talking about how Google will list items in the search box drop down- I’m talking about the kind of searching that says- humm last time she searched for exotic islands in
Tahiti- so perhaps now that she is searching under the word vacation I should pull up sites rife with water side tiki huts as well…

As ipods morph into the next generation of “this is so easy to use that a dead person could jam out” – the onus will fall even more heavily to other technology providers- including search engines- to serve up what users are looking for not just quickly, efficiently and exactly how they want it, but with the least amount of thought possible- and on a silver platter to boot.   

Once the search ability is straightened out- search engine providers should then focus on result display.  I’ll pick on Google since I Google everything and because I find the fact that “to Google” something has seeped its way into our everyday vocabulary impressive (or evil depending on my mood)… There is nothing more frustrating to me then to search for something and have the results come back as a mishmashed ad hoc assemblage of some of the key words I entered.  While Google does go to the trouble of highlighting them – it is quite annoying to have to read the “abstract” Google provides- which often don’t make any sense… Even Spink and I agree on this one- she says in her article that “all they can really do at present is squeeze in a few words, press search, and look at a list of websites-the list giving little indication of what the websites mean or how they are ranked.”

Spink asks in her article “how to train billions of people? Whoever comes up with the best solution for that question may capture huge market share.”  I disagree- the question is not how to train the population of web users that ranges from grandma to little johhny and keeps growing everyday.  Instead, we should be asking – how do we train the search engine providers to realize and understand the dynamic ways the human mind connects ideas and objects.  Quite literally- if people want better search capability then computers need to think more like we do- and the search technology needs to be customizable- so that  over time- it will understand the way I think and in time think just like me- scary thought isn’t it….