Ask a better question

The conversation protocol in this type of situation is very simple: ask a series of general questions in an attempt to establish common ground upon which a conversation can emerge.

As the reader will recognise, without great skill on the part of both the questioner and respondent, inanity ensues (Question: Where are you living these days? Answer: New York City, and you? Response: Prentice, Maine. Reply: Oh. [long pause]. I've heard of that.).

As the evening wore on, I bumped into a former classmate who had clearly tired of repetitive small talk. I can't remember the exact question I asked him, but I know it had something do to with New York City real estate developers. My question was indirect, but clearly, as I recall, aimed at eliciting salacious and outlandish tales of graft, kickbacks and double-dealing in Manhattan construction projects. My classmate did not take the bait. His response to me was polite but purposefully terse. It addressed the content of my question, but not the intent. However, he knew what I was up to, so to cap off his brief response, he left me an opening: "Now, ask a better question."

Ask a better question...

The response stuck with me. Not because it was brash, and generally out of line in small-talk protocol. Rather, it resonated because it is so relevant to search, and the challenges and opportunities present in today's search environment. The challenge is this: for many search queries. The resulting search listings are entirely unsatisfactory. Try a long-tail query (for example, "restaurants in Freeport, ME open after 8PM") and you'll see what I mean. Google, Yahoo and MSN offer no easy remedy for this problem. In user research we've conducted, searchers even express culpability if their search results are not relevant; as if it is their fault the search engine is returning poor results. To quote from one of our focus groups, "if Google does not return the results I need, I must have typed something wrong, so I do another search." Search engines, and Google specifically, have trained users to "ask a better question."

But why do searchers tolerate this? It stands to reason that searchers, eventually, will get tired of asking better questions, and demand more relevant result, faster. If this were true, I would argue that vertical search engines are in a strong position to gain. They offer two key advantages that general engines like Google or Yahoo can't easily match. One, they are context-specific. Search on Kayak and it's clear you are looking for travel fares. Search on Healthline and you are looking for health information. And two, they are not user-interface-constrained. While traditional search engines cannot stray far from the "blue links" model without confusing their users, vertical engines have no such limitations. They can offer tools for sorting, refinement and discovery that simply can't exist on the home page of Google today.

I believe we are at a tipping point, and we will start to see increased fragmentation of search query volume across a multitude of category-specific search engines. And data supports this. Vertical search engines like You Tube (video), Craigslist (classifieds), and Yelp! (local) far outpaced the growth of traditional search engines in 2007. Moreover, as a new wave of venture-funded search start-ups come out of beta and hone in on the dual opportunities of context and user interface, it's easy to see a scenario where consumers en masse refuse to "ask a better question," and instead demand their search engines "give a better answer." Take an engine like Circos (http://www.circos.com/), for example. While it can't yet answer my long-tail query, "restaurants in Freeport, ME open after 8PM," it's not a stretch to think it could do so once it's fully geared up and out of "preview" mode.

Should Google be scared? Maybe. If my prediction is right, Google will lose query share to myriad category-specific players. Then again, Google has an advertising platform that is unparalleled in scale and efficiency, and could play a role in monetising search inventory on any engine that rises to prominence. Google could also buy these players outright, but they won't be cheap, and will have many other suitors. So why doesn't Google simply out-innovate their smaller, nimbler rivals and stop them in their tracks? Ask a better question.

Article courtesy of MediaPost