That’s Not Relevant!
The big buzz today is that the owners of the #2 and #3 search engines, Microsoft and Yahoo, have decided to join forces in hopes of leveling the playing field against Google. I won’t go over the details of the Press Release, but one thing that stood out to me was the statement: “users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance.” This is interesting because it has bothered me for some time that the exponentially growing amount of information on the web hinders search. Is Microsoft-Yahoo offering some form of artificial intelligence in joint service that can fully understand search queries and the context in which people are searching?
I remember in middle school, there were a handful of search engines that I would use to research information for school reports. Over time, after migrating from physical and electronic encyclopedias to the internet, Google has become the search engine. But in recent years (mind you, I’m still pretty young and I’m only talking about a seven year period here), my search results have become more and more disappointing. For example, try searching “research on apples” in Google. You will see that about half of the results are relevant to the brand and not to the fruit. In this type of academic context, I feel that it would be more efficient to go back to the books (the tangible ones) for information. On the consumer level, I’ve found social media to be most reliable when I need to buy something.
So where does this leave search engines for me? It’d be great if one of them out there can segment information in a way that can make search more intuitive for all web users. In a Q&A after the partnership, Steve Ballmer shed some light on Bing’s feedback loop in its search algorithm. This means the more you search, the more Bing will learn about what is actually clicked. Hopefully, the next time I want to research apples, the first page will be filled with more relevant academic papers.
