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Search Engine Results: 2010
What search engines may look like in the future, including personalization,
universal search, eye tracking and interviews with leading industry experts



                                                                By: Gord Hotchkiss
                                                                    Tracy Sherman
                                                                        Rick Tobin
                                                                        Cory Bates
                                                                      Krista Brown

                                                                      2007 08 16
What do the next three years hold for the    About Enquiro Research
world of search? Will the search results     enquiroresearch.com
page in 2010 looks similar to what we use    One of North America’s leading search marketing firms, Enquiro provides online mar-
today?                                       keting and research solutions to a client base which includes several Fortune 500 com-
                                             panies. Its strategies are based on its own industry research and expertise in usability,
We interviewed some of the industry's top    and natural and sponsored search. Enquiro has also authored eye tracking studies
analysts and thought leaders to find out.    which have given marketers a greater understanding of user interaction with the major
And Enquiro conducted eye tracking on        search engines and defined “Google’s Golden Triangle.”
some of these possible future scenarios to
see how users would interact.                About Gord Hotchkiss
                                             Gord has been active in the marketing and advertising industry for over 20 years and
                                             has led Enquiro to be one of North America’s fastest growing tech companies. Also the
                                             board chairperson for the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO),
                                             he is recognized as an industry thought leader who is frequently called upon as a
                                             speaker, writer and analyst.




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 2
                                                       Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
Contents

 Introduction………………………………………….....4

 Methodology…………………………………………....6

 The Interviewees.……………………………..….....…8

 The Interviews…………………………………..…….10

 The Eye Tracking Study……………………...……..28

 Chunking……………………………………...……….30

 Fencing…………………………………………...…….34

 Google: 2010?...................................................44

 Time Spent on Page by Section - Buyers………....50

 Time Spent on Page by Section - Buyers………....51

 Implications for Marketers….….……………………54

 Acknowledgements…………………………………...60

 The Team………………………………………………..61




                                                                                      3
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
Introduction                                    What does the next three years hold for the world          results page have to change in order to be noticed
                                                                                                           on a richer results page?
                                                of search? Will the search results page in 2010
Search: 2010                                    looks similar to the search results page we’re see-
                                                ing today?                                                 At Enquiro, we have long been saying that the in-
                                                                                                           troduction of things like personalization and uni-
Strategies and tactics used by marketers        We seem to be at a important juncture in the his-          versal search results will dramatically impact the
                                                                                                           entire world of search marketing. The rules will
will have to evolve quickly and dramati-        tory of search engines. To this point, most of the
                                                innovation that’s been happening with the search           change significantly and the strategies and tactics
cally in order to keep pace with its rate of                                                               used by marketers will have to evolve quickly and
                                                engine has been happening in the back end, im-
change being seen from the engines              proving and tweaking the algorithms. But in the            dramatically in order to keep pace with the rate of
themselves.                                     past six months we’ve seen the beginning of what           change being seen from the engines themselves. It
                                                promises to be significant changes in the actual           seemed logical to us that now would be an oppor-
                                                search interface. Google’s unveiling of personal-          tune time to take the pulse of the search user ex-
                                                ization and universal search together with Ask’s           perience and try to see a few years into the future
                                                unveiling of 3D Search both seem to indicate that          how changes may impact both the user experience
                                                the pace of change in interface design is picking          and effective strategies to intercept those users.
                                                up. Why is this important? The search results              So we launched an initiative to interview a select
                                                pages have remained a fairly static landscape for          group of experts. First we talked to the usability
                                                the entire history of search. There has been little        people at each of the major engines, Marissa Mayer
                   “It seemed logical to us                                                                at Google, Larry Cornett at Yahoo, Justin Osmer at
                                                change in the text oriented linear presentation of
                   that now would be an         search results. The paradigm of 10 blue organic            Microsoft and Michael Ferguson at Ask. Then we
                   opportune time to take       link and a handful of sponsored results has be-            reached out to top industry analysts and thought
                   the pulse of the search      come fairly established amongst all the major play-        leaders and chatted with each of them. This group
                                                                                                           included Danny Sullivan, Jakob Nielsen, Chris
                   user experience and try      ers. And this common presentation of results has
                                                                                                           Sherman and Greg Sterling. With each, we asked
                   to see a few years into      largely dictated what the scanning pattern of those
                                                results would be. This scanning pattern has been           one simple question: what will the search results
                   the future how changes       detailed in two eye tracking results conducted by          page look like in 2010? Of course, implied within
                   may impact both the          Enquiro. But all that could change in the very near        this question is what will our search experience be
                   user experience and ef-      future as search engines become bolder in intro-           like in 2010? And that’s perhaps the bigger ques-
                                                                                                           tion. What screen will it be happening on? With
fective strategies to intercept those users.”   ducing innovation into the search results page in-
                                                                                                           what intent will we be using it?
                                                terface.

                                                For example, how will increased relevancy impact           This white paper not only brings together the vari-
                                                our interaction with search results? As personaliza-       ous opinions from each of these industry influen-
                                                tion starts to provide the opportunity to determine        cers and attempts to draw out some consistent
                                                relevancy not just by comparing it to a keyword but        themes, it actually goes two steps further. We
                                                also comparing it to the intent of the user, will this     took all the input we received from these experts
                                                result in a significantly different level of interaction   and aggregated them into a picture of what the
                                                with the search results page? And with the intro-          search results page might look like in 2010. Then
                                                duction of more types of results on the default            we conducted an internal eye tracking test here at
                                                page, will we be engaged with these results in a           Enquiro to see what impact things like a dramati-
                                                different manner? Will the mixing of text based            cally new interface, a richer presentation of adver-
                                                website results and image-based video results              tising messages, a greater degree of relevancy
                                                change how we navigate our way through those               based on access to personal information and an
                                                results? Will advertising presented on the search          aggregation of different types of results on the

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                                                             Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
same page might have on the average user. We           crepancy in the degree of optimism about how
conducted a series of eye tracking tests on differ-    much the search experience will change in three
ent types of search results pages, including a typi-   years. Jakob Nielsen was probably our most prag-
cal results page with universal results (as they’re    matic respondent, indicating he doesn’t expect any
currently being implemented on Google), personal-      significant changes in the three-year framework.
ized results as they may look in the next 12           Nevertheless he did speculate on three areas where
months, Ask’s 3D Search, and finally, our view of      we could see innovation. Contrast this with predic-
what the search results page might look like in        tions of rich Ajax functionality, mash ups and
2010 based on the input we received from all our       multi-touch displays.
experts. We’ve included the results from these eye
tracking tests in this report.                         What we’ll do within this white paper is take all the
                                                       input we received from the interviews and group          “There is, without a doubt, great passion
Finally, we share our thoughts about what useful       them into a number of common themes. For any-            about the future of search and we strongly
strategies might be for search marketers in the        one interested in reading the full transcripts of the    believe that the next three years will rep-
future. How do you successfully position yourself      interviews, these are posted on Gord Hotchkiss’s
to take advantage of the innovations being intro-      Out of my Gord blog.
                                                                                                                resent the most exciting era yet in the
duced by the search engines? How do you ensure                                                                  short history of web search.”
that your message will be seen on a much richer,
                                                       The eye tracking studies
much more functional search results page?
                                                       Of course, given our research bent and our past
We believe you’ll find the insights presented fasci-   history with eye tracking, one couldn’t expect us to
nating. It was a question that all our respondents     speculate on what a search results page might look
warmed up to and showed great enthusiasm for.          like in 2010 without wondering how a user might
There is, without a doubt, great passion about the     navigate that same page. What we wanted to do
future of search and we strongly believe that the      was create some comparisons of what interactions
next three years will represent the most exciting      may look like given some of the innovation that’s
era yet in the short history of web search.            creeping onto the page. We set up an internal test-
                                                       ing framework that created four different versions
Search Engine Results: 2010                            of similar sets of search results. First of all, we
                                                       recorded interactions with the results pages to rep-
The choice of 2010 as the target date for our          resent the current user experience on Google. We
speculation was more a matter of looking for a nice    gave our participants scenarios that would result in
round number than any deliberate thought, but as       the presentation of universal search results.
it turned out, the setting of the three-year horizon
proved to be an interesting one. It was just far       Then, we presented scenarios and (based on past
enough ahead that it was difficult to extrapolate      history and comments from participants) created
based on current work being done at the engines,       personalized results in a slightly more aggressive
yet it wasn’t far enough out to allow for total blue   presentation than that currently seen on Google.
sky brainstorming. Almost without exception all
our interviewees made comment about how chal-          Finally, we took all the input from all our interviews
lenging they found the three-year framework to         and asked our designer, Cory Bates, to put to-
predict within. It forced us to balance practicality   gether a sample of what a search results page
with bold predictions.                                 might look like in 2010. We presented the results
                                                       to our participants and recorded interactions using
Despite this, there was an amazing amount of dis-      our eye tracking system.
                                                                                                                                                        5
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Methodology   Methodology                                           •   Preferred search engine is Google, and,

              Objectives                                            •   Informed consent given by each individual to
                                                                        track their web history over a period of a three
              The overall objective of the study is to compare          individual eye tracking sessions.
              universal search against personalized search using
              Google’s Search Engine. Specifically the questions    Universal Search
              we want to answer are the following:
                                                                    Each person was given three tasks to research an
              •   Does personalization have an effect on the        iPhone, Harry Potter and the Spice Girls. These
                  time spent on a SERP?                             tasks were chosen because of the presence of uni-
                                                                    versal Google results (video, blogs, news, images,
              •   The hypothesis is that personalized search re-    etc.).
                  sults will increase time spent on a SERP due to
                  the increased relevancy in the results.           Task Scenarios

              •   What is the search behavior on a multi-paned      You have been hearing a lot about Apple's new
                  site, ASK.com versus Google?                      iPhone recently and would like to know if it's some-
                                                                    thing you should invest in. Use the following set of
              •   Does the scan pattern vary depending on the       results to learn more about it.
                  user’s commercial or non-commercial intent
                  for 2010 SERP? What is the user interaction?      The new Harry Potter movie, "The Order of the
                                                                    Phoenix" is due to come out in the next few weeks
                                                                    and you have a 10 year old nephew that would like
              Rationale for Study Design                            nothing more than to watch it with you. Use the
                                                                    following set of results to decide if he is old
              In order to investigate the above objectives we       enough to watch it.
              chose to focus on Google Search Engine Result
              Pages (SERP). This engine was chosen so that com-     This just in! The Spice Girls have decided to re-
              parisons can be made to previous baseline eye         unite for a worldwide tour later this year. This
              tracking results. This involved a series of related   news has "train wreck" written all over it and you
              eye tracking tasks to test engagement of users        can't wait to get a ticket. Use the following set of
              with universal, personalized, ASK.com and a futur-    results to learn more about their upcoming tour.
              istic rendition of what a 2010 SERP may look like.

              Limitations of the study included users giving con-   Personalization
              sent to track their web history.
                                                                    Each person was logged into a single secured
                                                                    Google Account to track web history on a Google
              Eye Tracking Methodology Details                      search for iPhones. The URLs for all the pages they
                                                                    viewed were analyzed and selected based on a few
              Panel recruitment:                                    factors: time spent on different online media
                                                                    (news, customer reviews, local results, blogs, and
              •   16 people between the ages of 24 and 55,          sponsored sites such as the Apple Store) and the
                                                                    purchase phase of their search.

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                           Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
Google SERP pages were then mocked up for each
person depending on where they finished off their
last search. The positions that were personalized
were Top Sponsored #2 (stayed consistent for each
person – “iPhone in Canada”) and Organic results 3,
4 and 5.

Each person was presented their personalized
search results page and we tracked eye movement
and engagement with the personalized and non-
personalized content on the page.

Task Scenarios

Assume you are interested in learning more about
the iPhone and so, have performed a search for
iPhone on Google. Interact with the following page
layout and click on the item that you would click-
through on.

Assume you are interested in purchasing the iPhone
and so, have performed a search for iPhone on
Google. Interact with the following page layout and
click on the item that you would click-through on.

ASK

Similarly, to measure fixations and time spent on a
multi-paned search engine, each person was asked
to search for Harry Potter on ASK.com.

2010

All users were asked to review the 2010 SERP and
were presented one of two mock-ups that was de-
pendant on whether they were in the research or
purchase phase of the buying process.




                                                                                      7
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The Interviewees                                                   Jakob Nielsen                                        Larry Cornett
                                                                   Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is                            Larry Cornett is Vice
            “If I ever had to build a                              a User Advocate and                                 President of Search Ex-
            search engine, or more                                 principal of the Nielsen                            perience at Yahoo! Before
            precisely, the interface                               Norman Group which he                               that, he led the eBay team
                                                                   co-founded with Dr.                                 focused on Tailored Shop-
            of a search engine, this                               Donald A. Norman                                    ping Experiences, Plat-
            would be the team I                                    (former VP of research                              form, and International
            would want to bring                                    at Apple Computer).                                 sites. He Apple’s designer
            together.”                                             Until 1998 he was a Sun                             for the Finder in Mac OS
                                                                   Microsystems Distin-                                8, 9, and OS X and
                                                                   guished Engineer.          worked at IBM working on database and develop-
                                                                                              ment software. He was a principal consultant at an
                                        Dr. Nielsen founded the "discount usability engi-     interaction design agency he founded, working on
                                        neering" movement for fast and cheap improve-         desktop, web, and mobile solutions. He received
                                        ments of user interfaces and has invented several     his Ph.D. in HCI Psychology from Rice University
                                        usability methods, including heuristic evaluation.    and holds multiple patents for his work on web-
                                        He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways     based products and hardware solutions.
                                        of making the Internet easier to use.




                                                                  Marissa Mayer                                       Greg Sterling

                                                                  Marissa leads the prod-                             Greg Sterling is the found-
                                                                  uct management efforts                              ing principal of Sterling
                                                                  on Google's search prod-                            Market Intelligence, a con-
                                                                  ucts She joined Google                              sulting and research firm
                                                                  in 1999 as Google's first                           focused on the Internet's
                                                                  female engineer. Several                            impact on local consumer
                                                                  patents have been filed                             and advertisers behavior.
                                                                  on her work in artificial                           He also is a Senior Analyst
                                                                  intelligence and inter-                             for Local Mobile Search, an
                                                                  face design.                                        advisory service from Opus
                                                                                                                      Research.
                                        Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS
                                        research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland and at   Before Sterling Market Intelligence, Sterling ran The
                                        SRI International in Menlo Park, California.          Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media program.
                                                                                              Prior to The Kelsey Group, Sterling was at TechTV
                                        Graduating with honors, Marissa received her B.S.     where he helped produce "Working the Web," a na-
                                        in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Sci-     tional television show dedicated to e-business and
                                        ence from Stanford University. For both degrees,      the Internet. Before TechTV he was a founding edi-
                                        she specialized in artificial intelligence.           tor and executive producer at AllBusiness.com.

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                                                  Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
Michael Ferguson                                            Chris Sherman
                                      Michael Ferguson is Sen-                               Chris Sherman is Execu-
                                      ior User Experience Ana-                               tive Editor of SearchEn-
                                      lyst for Ask.com. Look-                                gineLand.com and Presi-
                                      ing at motivations, be-                                dent of Searchwise LLC, a
                                      havior, and experience                                 Boulder Colorado based
                                      through culture, technol-                              Web consulting firm. He
                                      ogy, and psychology, he                                is the author of a number
                                      informs product develop-                               of books on search en-
                                      ment with user context                                 gines and programming,
Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
                                       and design strategy.                                  including “Google Power:
                                       Before joining Ask, Mi-    Unleash the Full Power of Google” and “The Invisi-
chael ran an interactive design agency with clients               ble Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search
that included Oracle and Stanford's Graduate                      Engines Can’t See” (with Gary Price). Chris holds a
School of Business, as well as independent film                   master's degree in Interactive Educational Technol-
makers and film festivals. Michael holds a B.A. in                ogy from Stanford University and a bachelor's de-
British and American Literature from New College                  gree in Visual Arts and Communications from the
of Florida.                                                       University of California, San Diego.




                                Danny Sullivan                                              Justin Osmer

                           Widely considered a                                              Sr. Product Manager, Live
                           leading "search engine                                           Search, Microsoft Corp..
                           guru," Danny Sullivan                                            Justin’s career started in
                           has helped many under-                                           the early 1990’s as a
                           stand how search en-                                             communications profes-
                           gines work for over a                                            sional and he first worked
                           decade. Danny has been                                           in Search in the late 90’s
                           quoted in The Wall St.                                           on the “client side” manu-
                           Journal, USA Today, The                                          ally submitting URL’s to
                           Los Angeles Times,                                               Yahoo!, AltaVista, and
                           Forbes, The New Yorker                                           Excite. Since that time he
and Newsweek and ABC's Nightline. Danny began                     has been in multiple marketing communications
covering search engines in late 1995 with "A Web-                 and product management roles across multiple
master's Guide To Search Engines," later expanding                industries and is currently in his fourth year at Mi-
the guide into Search Engine Watch, serving as edi-               crosoft. As Sr. Product Manager on Search Justin
tor-in-chief through November 2006. Now he heads                  works with the Live Search engineering and devel-
up Search Engine Land as editor-in-chief, taking it               opment team as well as the marketing team to de-
into the next generation of search coverage. Danny                velop and introduce the Microsoft Web Search ex-
is also Third Door Media's chief content officer.                 perience to millions worldwide.

                                                                                                                          9
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
Search: 2010                                    If I ever had to build a search engine, or more pre-   to the page. We have some sponsored ads on top,
                                                                                                       ten blue organic links and generally some spon-
                                                cisely, the interface of a search engine, this would
                                                                                                       sored ads on the left side. It’s a very linear format
The Interviews                                  be the team I would want to bring together. When I
                                                came up with the idea of looking forward three         that runs from top to bottom and is almost always
                                                years and speculating on what the search results       composed exclusively of text. And although this
                                                page may look like in 2010, these are the names        format has refined itself over the past decade,
                                                that immediately came to mind:                         there haven’t been any significant changes to the
                                                                                                       look. Will that continue to be true in the next three
                                                    Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known usability      years?
                                                    guru
                                                                                                       Marissa Mayer: I think it will be, hopefully, a lay-
                                                    Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search User          out that’s a little bit less linear and text based,
                                                    Experience and interface design                    even than our search results today and ultimately
                                                                                                       use what I call the ‘sea of whiteness’ more in the
                                                    Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of         middle of the page, and lays out in a more infor-
             “It’s a huge dominant user be-         Ask’s unique user experience                       mation dense way all the information from videos
             havior to scan a linear list and       Larry Cornett, the VP of user experience at        to audio reels to text, and so on and so forth. So if
             so this attempt to put other           Yahoo                                              you imagine the results page, instead of being long
                                                                                                       and linear, and having ten results on the page that
             things on the side, to tamper          Justin Osmer, product manager for Microsoft        you can scroll through to having ten very heteroge-
             with the true layout, the true         lie search                                         neous results, where we show each of those results
design of the page, to move from it being                                                              in a form that really suits their medium, and in a
                                                    Chris Sherman, executive editor of Searchen-       more condensed format. When you started seeing
just a list, it’s going to be difficult”            gineland and always thoughtful industry ob-        some diagrams, some video, some news, some
                                                    server                                             charts, you might actually have a page that looks
                                                    Greg Sterling, another industry analyst who        and feels more like an interactive encyclopedia. To
                                                    always has interesting insights, particularly in   keep hounding on the analogy of the front page of
                                                    to the local and mobile world                      the New York Times. It’s not like the New York
                                                                                                       Times…I mean they have basically the same layout
                                                    Danny Sullivan, the Go to Guy of search            each time, but it’s not like they have a column that
                                                                                                       only has this kind of content, and if it doesn’t fill
                                                This would be the dream team for designing the         the column, too bad. They have a basic format
                                                new search interface. So it was with a great deal of   that they change as it suits the information.
                                                anticipation that I threw the same question in front
                                                of all of them : What will the search results page
                                                                                                       Jakob Nielsen: There could be small changes,
                                                look like in 2010? Here, aggregated and con-
                                                                                                       there could be big changes. I don’t think big
                                                densed, are their answers. I've broken them into
                                                                                                       changes. The small changes are, potentially, a
                                                themes that consistently came out in these inter-
                                                                                                       change from the one dimensional linear layout to
                                                views.
                                                                                                       more of a two dimensional layout with different
                                                                                                       types of information, presented in different parts
                                                The look of the search results page                    of the page so you could have more of a newspaper
                                                                                                       metaphor in terms of the layout. I’m not sure if
                                                The search results page has defined itself into an     that’s going to happen. It’s a huge dominant user
                                                accepted standard. With the exception of Ask3D,        behavior to scan a linear list and so this attempt to
                                                all the other major players have a very similar look   put other things on the side, to tamper with the

 10
                                                            Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
true layout, the true design of the page, to move            ies; we recently launched travel and, most recently
from it being just a list, it’s going to be difficult,       music, so music artists. And essentially that's
but I think it’s a possibility. There’s a lot of things,     bringing a lot of very useful information from dif-
types of information that the search engines are             ferent sources together in one place. And so users
crunching on, and one approach is to unify them              don't have to click and go one place to see the
all into one list based on it’s best guess as to rele-       trailer, click and go to another place to see infor-
vance or importance or whatever, and that is what            mation about the movie and ratings, click to yet
I think is most likely to happen. But it could also be       another place to get show times for their local city.
that they decide to split it up, and say, well, out          It's actually all brought to the user in one compact
here to the right we’ll put shopping results, and out        module so it's all that information that they would
here to the left we’ll put news results, and down            find useful in one place. I can't speak to what
here at the bottom we’ll put pictures, and so forth,         Google is up to but they obviously must realize that
and I think that’s a possibility.                            a home page with nothing but a search box isn't
                                                             quite serving everything that people want. And
Larry Cornett:The search experience is becoming a            they launched iGoogle, obviously, for that reason.
lot more interactive, it's a lot more of a dynamic                                                                               “The search experience is be-
experience and we’re all experimenting with bring-           So let’s venture one step further. What if this                     coming a lot more interactive,
ing back a lot of richer content. And rich meta              search portal, iGoogle, let’s us enter a query and it               it's a lot more of a dynamic ex-
data, structured data, much more than we ever                builds a page for us which appears as a new tab,
were doing before. It's going beyond the simple              complete with a mix of results, based on the en-                    perience and we’re all experi-
text title and abstract and URL, right.                      gine’s understanding of where we’re at and what                     menting with bringing back a lot
                                                             our intent is. I put that to Justin Osmer (without the   of richer content. ”
                                                             iGoogle part):
Does search become our own personal portal
page?                                                        Justin Osmer: Yes, I can see that very easily. And
                                                             we’ve just scratched the surface on that with
As search engines get to know us better, do they
                                                             live.com. You can set up a personalized page on
become our home page for everything? Do search
                                                             live.com and pull in search results. You can set it
engines get smart enough to bring together all the
                                                             up so that it queries news results for you everyday.
information we need about any topic, at our re-
                                                             You get fresh news results on a query that you al-
quest, and organize it into a rich portal like page
                                                             ways search on, you can bring in all sorts of RSS
that gives us a jumping off point into a number of
                                                             feeds from literally the whole web, so you’re con-
different types of content. It used to be that
                                                             stantly getting updates of feeds very easily and you
search was a “get on, get off” task but increasingly,
                                                             can subscribe to an interest area of search and get
search is becoming a stickier experience. Google,
                                                             that populated for yourself. That absolutely is a
probably the clearest example of the “tool based”
                                                             scenario that makes a lot of sense.
approach to search, has recently acknowledged the
importance of personalized homepages with the
introduction of iGoogle, moving them much closer             Search as a social experience
to a Yahoo type model.
                                                             Personalization has somewhat pushed social search
Larry Cornett: I think one place that you’ve seen            to the back burner as a promise for the future. But
us doing a bit of that is with what we call our WOW          increasingly, the social nature of the web is con-
experiences. And so we launched a few of the mov-            verging with search in more and more cases. Will
ies, it's like a direct display; it's a really rich direct   the next three years see a furthering of this conver-
display on the search page. We've launched mov-              gence and the blending of Web communities and
                                                                                                                                                             11
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
search functionality?

                                                  Larry Cornett: And that's having more of a human
                                                                                                           Smarter search engines
                                                  influence and obviously more of a human presence
                                                  in the search experience. You'll see that quite a bit
                                                                                                           Another major theme was not so much what search
                                                  with the way that StumbleUpon has been working,
                                                                                                           engines would look like but how they would get
                                                  the things that we've done with image search with        smarter in the background. Driving this would be
                                                  a tighter integration of Flickr images and really
                                                                                                           factors like personalization and tweaking of algo-
                                                  showing the attribution that those photographs           rithms.
                                                  coming from real people within the network.

                                                  Larry’s comment made me think of a future where          Personalization
                                                  we may stay within our favorite online communities
                                                  more and look for search functionality to be             Talk of personalization has pretty much dominated
                                                  brought into that environment. And in that environ-      the search engine space for the last two or three
             “I don't really see any kind of      ment, will search become more of a discovery tool        months. Our panel seems somewhat split on the
             dramatic breakthrough on the         then a navigational tool? Will search leverage the       promise of personalization to significantly move
                                                  benefits of the community to help make sugges-           the needle on relevance in the next three years.
             horizon...And it's not because
                                                  tions in less task focused situations?
             people aren’t trying, it's because                                                            Chris Sherman: I don't really see any kind of dra-
             of those inherent ambiguities in     Larry Cornett: You talk about Facebook, you talk         matic breakthrough on the horizon. I think as long
language.”                                        about some of these other examples where people          as we’re limited to the current search form factor,
                                                  may have a fuzzier information need or a different       if you will, where we’re encouraged to do the juke-
                                                  type of desire for information. In many cases, im-       box approach, where we punch in a few keywords,
                                                  age search for example, people use it for entertain-     pull the lever and hope to get the jackpot. Lan-
                                                  ment and so they're using it to pass the time or         guage is so inherently ambiguous that as good as
                                                  they're just curious. And in those cases, it's not       the search engine gets, as good as they are at ob-
                                                  like they have really specific targeted goals in mind    serving our behavior and our habits of reading and
                                                  or very specific queries in mind even, but they're       so on, being limited to those very, very short que-
                                                  pretty open to being given information, so you'll        ries, that's really the governor on the whole thing.
                                                  see that with Facebook, a lot of that is you coming      Until search engines can find a way to let us
                                                  in and just understanding what's going on within         search, for example, by submitting a page of con-
                                                  your network and that activity. And so you're            tent and analyzing the full text of that page and
                                                  learning about things that you may not have even         then tying that in conjunction with our past behav-
                                                  formed a query about. Your friend's telling you          ior, that's just one approach, there's a whole vari-
                                                  about a new website that you wouldn't even know          ety of ways we can go about doing it, but I just
                                                  to ask about on a search engine. You discover it         don't see any thing major. And it's not because
                                                  because he tells you about it. StumbleUpon is very       people aren’t trying, it's because of those inherent
                                                  similar in that you want to see what people con-         ambiguities in language.
                                                  sider to be quality content and you don't know ex-
                                                  actly what you're looking for, but you just press the    Danny Sullivan: I think personalized search is go-
                                                  stumble button and see what are people thinking is       ing to continue to get strong. I do think that
                                                  interesting right now. So this is definitely, I think,   Google is on to something with their personalized
                                                  a lot of convergence in some of these areas.             search results. I don’t think that they’re going to
                                                                                                           cause you to be in an Amazon situation where

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                                                              Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
you’re continuing to be recommended stuff you’re          ingful difference.
no longer interested in. I think that people are mis-
understanding how sophisticated it can be.                Larry Cornett: I think we’re just barely on the tip
                                                          of the iceberg with how useful it could be. I think
Jakob Nielsen: All this stuff, all this talk about per-   traditional approaches to personalization have re-
sonalization, is incredibly hard to do. Partly be-        quired a lot of work on the part of the user and I
cause it’s not just personalization, based on a user      think, just given my experience over the past years
model, which is hard enough already. You have to          in various places, at different companies and work-
guess that this person prefers this style of content      ing for software and the Web, people don't like to
and so on. But furthermore, you have to guess as          spend a lot of time configuring their preferences.
to what this person’s “in this minute” interest is        So anytime you try to take an easier approach and
and that is almost impossible to do. I’m not too          say I’ll let the user customize experience or person-
optimistic on the ability to do that. In many ways I      alize it, it'll work for a small number of users that
think the web provides self personalization, you          care to invest but the large majority don't want to
know, self service personalization. I show you my         have spend a lot of time doing that. So I think the
navigational scheme of things you can do on my            key to personalization is actually finding a way to                 “My point of view is that there is
site and you pick the one you want today, and the         do that in a way that requires very low investment                  a PR and political challenge
job of the web designer is to, first of all, design       from the user and it has a lot of return. And so it’s               around privacy and the so called
choices that adequately meet common user needs,           finding that balance of trying to get that just right
and secondly, simply explain these choices so peo-        so that the user gets a lot more value than they                    creep factor that people feel
ple can make the right ones for them. And that’s          have to put energy into it.                                         when they think that the engine
what most sites do very poorly. Both of those two                                                                  is studying them and monitoring their be-
steps are done very poorly on most corporate web-         I then asked Larry if 3 years was too short a time       havior and that record somehow makes
sites. But when it’s done well, that leads to people      for personalization to make a significant differ-        them vulnerable or makes them uncom-
being able to click–click and they have what they         ence:
want, because they know what they want, and its                                                                    fortable. ”
very difficult for the computer to guess what they        Larry Cornett: You know, in the past I might've
want in this minute.                                      said yes but I think there's an increasing pace of
                                                          change that’s occurred within this industry. And I
Greg Sterling: I think there are some technical is-       think that three years is not too long, within the
sues like, what does it mean, and what does that          next three years I think we'll definitely have a lot
look like. You and I doing the same queries over a        more answers and I think there's so many people
period of time, what would our results look like? Is      that are springing up in this space, playing around
there a real benefit there for us? We could probably      with all these startup experiences for search that
argue in some cases yes, I would point to the local       the velocity definitely increase. I think that's we'll
as an example. I think there is a political challenge,    see something soon.
right? My point of view is that there is a PR and
political challenge around privacy and the so called      Justin Osmer brought up a variation on personal-
creep factor that people feel when they think that        ization with mode based search, where engines
the engine is studying them and monitoring their          become smarter at unraveling the intent of the
behavior and that record somehow makes them               user:
vulnerable or makes them uncomfortable. But I do
think it is a potentially significant advance in cer-     Justin: An area that we’re focusing on over here at
tain contexts, if it really goes to disambiguation.       Live search is thinking more about the mode in
Yes, I think in certain cases it does make a mean-        which people are in when they’re using search.

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Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
Are they exploring, just kind of poking around, or
     truly researching something? Are they looking to
     purchase something? Are they in there simply for
     entertainment refreshment sake? So they just need
     five minutes to goof off and poke around and look        Is Google holding a number of personalization
     up vacations or something. Then being able to            cards up their sleeve?
     present the results in a way that give you that full
     spectrum of experience, so that the modes of con-        So obviously, the opinions on the effectiveness of
     sumption will dictate how much you get in line, so       personalization are mixed. But I can’t help won-
     the verticals in essence will become obsolete. The       dering if Google is holding a significant portion of
     same rich content that you might get in a vertical       the effectiveness of their personalization algorithm
     experience may be brought inline or brought onto         in reserve, pending further testing on the beta
     the results page in a way that shows you, wow, the       dataset they’re currently collecting. I posed this
     search engine really does have more here, in a           possibility to Chris Sherman.
     unique way.
                                                              Chris: I suspect that there's probably quite a bit
     Osmer said this “mode identification” could be ac-       more that they're not showing but I don't know that
     complished in a few ways, including personaliza-         it’s necessarily that they're being secretive. I think
     tion:                                                    there's caution that changing things too much
                                                              might alienate the searcher with the search results.
     Justin: I think we’re getting close to a tipping point   I think if they got things that they are able to do,
     on personalization where people are going to figure      we’ll start to see them gradually, in a testing fash-
     out that, “Wow, I can get a lot more out of my           ion, where a few users will be exposed to it and
     search experience if I tell the search engine more       over time, yes, they'll be rolled out. But honestly, I
     about me.” And so it may require some one-time           don't know, that's just speculation on my part. But
     setup time charge to you, to go in and say you like      with the number of people that are working on this
     this or you don’t like this, or you want this or you     stuff, they probably have tons of stuff that they're
     don’t want this, or simply just clicking a box that      not showing us.
     says “Yes, I okay the search engine to track my
     queries, or look at my clickstream and give me           Search driven by Query Trends
     more relevant information or I want to participate
     in a beta product that allows me to tell the search      Danny Sullivan brought up the fact that search en-
     engine what I’m looking for so it can learn more         gines, with their access to query volumes and
     about me or people like me.                              trends, should be able to alter the results for ex-
                                                              traordinary circumstances:
     The other way would be by using the query itself as
     a determiner:                                            Danny: I think they’re going to get a lot more intel-
                                                              ligent at giving you more from a particular data-
     Justin: We know what the super popular queries           base when they know you’re doing a specific a kind
     are on a day-to-day basis and usually they fall into     of search. It’s not necessarily an interface change,
     a category and so if we know the “Paris Hilton”,         but then again it is. This is the thing I talked about
     that’s an area where you’re probably in an enter-        when the London Car Bombing attempt happened,
     tainment mode and so we would try and offer up a         and I’m searching for “London Bombings”. When
     user experience of search results page that would        you see a spike in certain words you ought to know
     be more tuned that way                                   that there’s a reason behind that spike. It’s going

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                  Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
to be news driven probably, so why are you giving      through application or operating system integra-
me 10 search results, why don’t you give me 10         tion. Not surprisingly, this was brought up by
news results?                                          Justin Osmer from Microsoft, who has long been
                                                       promising this integration. Chris Sherman also
Will usefulness become part of a search algo-          brought it up as another signal to disambiguate
rithm?                                                 intent:

A tantalizing tidbit of prediction was touched on by   Justin: From a Microsoft perspective, also being
a few different people, notably Jakob Nielsen and      able (when you’re in Office) to search while you’re
Marissa Mayer. As we begin interacting with our        writing a Word document; to just do a right-click
search results and websites, will the notion of use-   and boom, you’re searching on the term you just
fulness be factored into future search algorithms?     highlighted. And you’re able to set up a search
Jakob Nielsen brought up the possibility.              default to whatever engine you want. Some of that
                                                       technology is there today but we’re going to be
Jakob: I think we can see a change maybe being a       doing more and more that I think.
more of a usefulness relevance ranking. I think
there is a tendency now for a lot of not very useful   Chris: Until search engines can find a way let us
results to be dredged up that happen to be very        search by submitting a page of content and analyz-
popular, like Wikipedia and various blogs. They’re     ing the full text of that page and then tying that in
not going to be very useful or substantial to people   conjunction with our past behavior, that's just one
who are trying to solve problems. So I think that      approach.
with counting links and all of that, there may be a
change and we may go into a more behavioral            The semantic search engine?
judgment as to which sites actually solve people’s
problems, and they will tend to be more highly         When will Web 2.0 come to search? To this point,
ranked.                                                search is still a fairly rudimentary experience, com-
                                                       pared to the innovation seen through the rest of
And then, without prompting, Marissa Mayer indi-       the web. The text based presentation and the typi-
cated this may be in Google’s thinking in the future   cal blue hyperlinks look more like the web of 1996
as well. She talked about people marking up            than the web of 2007. Will that change in the next
search results and webpages and interacting with       three years? Well, it actually has already started to
them in a way that indicated that they found them      change. The experience presented on Ask3D
useful and valuable.                                   Search rolls in much more functionality than we’ve
                                                       typically seen on a search results page. And this
Marissa: I think the presentation is going to be       seems to be acting as a catalyst for all the search
largely based on our perceived notion of relevance,    engines to look at rolling in more functionality.
which of course leverages the user, in the ways        Ajax and other richer programming environments
they interact with the page, and looks at what they    will make the user experience more intuitive and
do and that helps inform us as to what we should       seamless.
do.
                                                       Marissa: We will be able to have much more rich
Contextual Search                                      interaction with the search results pages, there
                                                       might be layers of search results pages: take my
Another area of innovation is launching a search       results and show them on a map, take my results
from within the context of a task or an application    and show them to me on a timeline. It’s basically

                                                                                                               15
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
the ability to interact in a really fast way, and take   topic for that decade”. They just help you visualize
     the results you have and see them in a new light.        the nut of information across all the results in
                                                              these fundamentally different ways that ‘sort’ kind
                                                              of gets at. But it’s really allowing that richer pres-
                                                              entation and that overview of results on the meta
     But it’s not just search engine results pages that       level that helps you see it.
     Marissa sees a higher level of interaction with. She
     sees a deeper or more interactive experience with        Danny Sullivan also touched on the same theme:
     all web pages by being able to annotate and
     markup pages for future reference.                       Danny: I think the most dramatic change in how
                                                              we present search results, really has come off of
     Marissa: I think that people will be annotating          local. And people go “wow, these maps are really
     search results pages and web pages a lot. They’re        cool!” Well of course they’re really cool, they’re pre-
     going to be rating them, they’re going to be review-     senting information on a map which makes sense
     ing them. They’re going to be marking them up,           when we’re talking about local information. You
     saying “I want to come back to this one later”. So       want things displayed in that kind of manner. It
     we have some remedial forms of this in terms of          doesn’t make sense to take all web search results
     Notebook now, but I imagine that we’re going to          and put them on a map. You could do it, but it
     make notes right on the pages later. People are          doesn’t communicate additional information for
     going to be able to say I want to add a note here; I     you that’s probably irrelevant and that needs to be
     want to Google something there, and you’ll be able       presented in a visual manner. If you think about
     to do that.                                              the other kinds of search that you tend to do, Blog
                                                              search for instance, it may be that there’s going to
     Marissa Mayer also talks about the ability to sort       be a more chronological display, much like what we
     results based on different dimensions, such as lo-       saw them do with news archive where they would
     cation and time.                                         do a search and they would tell you this happened
                                                              within these years at this time. Right now when I
     Marissa: What I’m sort of imagining is that in the       do a Google blog search, by default it shows me
     first basic search, you’re presented with a really       ‘most relevant’. But sometimes I want to know
     rich general overview page, that interweaves all         what the most recent thing is, and what’s the most
     these different mediums, and on that page you            recent thing that’s also the most relevant thing
     have a few basic controls, so you could say, look,       right? So perhaps when I do a Google blog search, I
     what really matters to me is the time dimension, or      can see something running down the left hand side
     what really matters to me is the location dimen-         that says “last hour” and within the last hour you
     sion. So you want to see it on a timeline, do you        show me the most relevant things in the last hour,
     want to see it on a map? It’s a richer experience.       the last 4 hours, and then the last day. And you
     What’s nice about timeline and date (as we’re cur-       could present it that way, almost sort of a timeline
     rently experimenting with them on Google Experi-         metaphor, I’m sure there are probably things you
     mental) is not only do they allow you to sort differ-    could do with shading and other stuff to go along
     ently, they allow you to visualize your results dif-     with that.
     ferently. So if you see your results on a map, you
     can see the loci, so you can see this location is im-    …if you really want to talk about search interfaces,
     portant to this query, and that location is really       what will be really fun to envision is what happens
     important to that query. And when you look at it         when Ajax starts coming along and doing other
     in time line you can see, “wow, this is a really hot     things. Can I start putting the sponsored search

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                 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
results where they are hovering above other re-           think we'll see search results actually changed dy-
sults? Is there another issue that comes with that?       namically in real time as we apply those various
There may be some confusion as to why I was get-          tools.
ting this and I was getting that, can I pop up a map
as I hover over a result? I could deliver you a stan-
dard set of search results and I can also deliver
you local results on top of a particular type of pic-     Danny Sullivan feels it depends on the task.
ture. If I move my mouse along it I could show you
a preview of what you get in local and you might          Danny: If you’re just doing a general search, I
go “Oh wow, there’s a whole map there” and jump           don’t think that putting a whole lot of functionality
off in that direction. That would be quite useful to      is going to help you, you could put a lot of options
see that stuff come off of there. But right now I         there and historically we haven’t seen people use
just don’t see anything coming out of it. What we         those things, and I think that’s because they just
typically have had when people have played with           want to do their searches. They want you to just
the interface is, these really weird things like, ‘well   naturally get the right kind of information that’s
we’ll fly you though the results, or we’ll group          there and a lot of the time they give you that direct
them’. None of which is really something that             answer. You don’t need to do a lot of manipula-
you’d need added to the choices, do I want to go
                                                                                                                             “I think what they might do is
                                                          tion. It’s a different thing I think when you get into
vertical, do I not want to go vertical?                   a lot of vertical, very task orientated kinds of                   start to expose some of those
                                                          searches, where you’re saying, ‘I don’t just need                  algorithms and some of those
More of a hands-on experience with greater                the quick answer, I don’t just need to browse and                  knobs and dials to let us dial-
functionality exposed to users                            see all the things that are out there, but actually                up or dial-out with certain per-
                                                          I’m trying to drill down on this subject in a particu-
The nature of our interaction with the search re-         lar way’. Local tends to be a great example. ‘Now
                                                                                                                   sonalization features and fine-tune their
sults page is fairly static. We look and we click.        you’ve given me all the results that match the zip       search results using controls that are
Any attempt to incorporate more functionality on          code, but really I would like to narrow it down into     more similar to what you'd find on Photo-
the results page, in the form of filtering options,       a neighborhood, so how can I do that?’ Or a shop-        shop where we've got sliders and dolls or
has been met, on the most part, with apathy from          ping search. ‘I have a lot of results but now I want     various graphic displays.”
users. Even the advanced search functionality             to buy something, so now I need to know who has it
that’s been around for over a decade is used by a         in inventory? Now I really need to know who has it
very small percentage of users. Are we ready as           cheapest? And I need to know who’s the most
users to get our hands on the buttons and dials           trusted merchant?’ Then I think the searcher is
that could fine-tune our search? Will search be-          going to be willing to do more work on the search
come more of an interactive experience?                   and make use of more of the options that you give
                                                          to them.
Chris Sherman saw us getting our hands on the
buttons and levers that power personalization:            Jakob Nielsen believes it’s a possibility, but one
                                                          he’s not too optimistic about:
Chris: I think what they might do is start to expose
some of those algorithms and some of those knobs          Jakob: The third one is to add more tools to the
and dials to let us dial-up or dial-out with certain      search interface to provide query reformulation
personalization features and fine-tune their search       and query refinement options. I’m also very skepti-
results using controls that are more similar to           cal about this, because this has been tried a lot of
what you'd find on Photoshop where we've got slid-        times and it has always failed. If you go back and
ers and dolls or various graphic displays. And I          look at old screen shots of all of the different

                                                                                                                                                         17
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
search engines that have been out there over the           stuff and I think that in the light of keyword query
                                                last 15 years or so, there have been a lot of at-          string lengths, which has stagnated I think, I don’t
                                                tempts to do things like this. People are basically        know where the high point of the bell curve is…it’s
                                                lazy, and this makes sense. The basic information          like two or three words. Norvig talks about getting
                                                foraging theory, which is, I think, the one theory         people to interact more with the search engine so
                                                that basically explains why the web is the way it is,      the result can be better right and he’s saying…he’s
                                                says that people want to expend minimal effort to          sort of admitting with his implied conversation
                                                gain their benefits. And this is an evolutionary           about speech recognition or speech input that you
                                                point that has come about because the creatures            can’t really get people to formulate these coherent
                                                who don’t exert themselves are the ones most likely        questions or longer query strings and you have to
                                                to survive when there are bad times or a crisis of         find alternative strategies so some mix of active
                                                some kind. So people are inherently lazy and don’t         solicitation or tools that make it fun or interesting
                                                want to exert themselves. Picking from a set of            and then passive personalization or other strategies
                                                choices is one of the least effortful interaction styles   to get people a better result.
                                                which is why this point and click interaction in gen-
             “I think this will be true in      eral seems to work very well. Whereas, tweaking            Stratification of user functionality
             2010, the text results are still   sliders or operating pull-down menus and all that
                                                stuff, is just more work.                                  So, if the search engine is going to ask more of us
             a very important visual part
                                                                                                           as users, in return for giving us greater control over
             of the page. They do not nec-      Michael Ferguson: It’s our job to go out of our way        defining our search experience, will we run into the
             essarily look as sexy as some      to make something as quickly navigable and easy to         same problem we currently have with advanced
             video or some audio but that       use as possible without [users] having to make any         search? Will those features only appeal to a small
is the core of the experience and that’s        effort or set preferences, etc. We are always fo-          percentage of users who are comfortable rolling up
                                                cused on what is the fastest flow for people to get to     their sleeves and interacting with the engine? And
why we still have those in the prominent
                                                the core of what they are trying to get to out of the      will this mean that we'll have two versions of
placing that we do. So my sense is you’re       search results, so as far as bringing more steps           search, one for power users and one for the rest of
not going to be able to ask the users to do     onto the page …it has to be done with respect to the       us?
work, their footsteps will walk to the ex-      users intent and goals and really cannot compete
perience that is most delightful and easy       with that. I think this will be true in 2010, the text     Chris Sherman: I don't think so. I think most people
                                                results are still a very important visual part of the      live with the results that they get. Right now, today
for them to use.                                page. They do not necessarily look as sexy as some         we have advanced search and nobody uses it.
                                                video or some audio but that is the core of the ex-        There are a lot of tools are really allow power users
                                                perience and that’s why we still have those in the         to get in and do a lot of fine-tuning of their queries
                                                prominent placing that we do. So my sense is               and I'd say less than 1%, actually take advantage of
                                                you’re not going to be able to ask the users to do         that functionality. So I think as we evolve and those
                                                work, their footsteps will walk to the experience          tools do surface, you're still have the vast majority
                                                that is most delightful and easy for them to use.          of people happy with the result that they get but it's
                                                                                                           still going to be that 1% of people that are currently
                                                Greg Sterling: You will get more participation if it’s     using advanced search that will take advantage of
                                                easy, if it’s fun, if it’s effective and makes the ex-     the surfacing of those capabilities. But, that said, if
                                                perience better. If I do travel research and I can         they make it easy enough so it's more like doing
                                                quickly capture and copy and save hotels, destina-         something like playing around with Photoshop or
                                                tions or whatever and manipulate and come back to          some of the other graphics editors and it's intui-
                                                those, that kind of thing is valuable. But you make        tively obvious then we might see people gradually
                                                a fair point about putting a burden on users to do         start gravitating towards that and taking advan-

 18
                                                            Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
tage of those tools.

Justin Osmer: There will always be the one-size-
fits-all option, just based on pure market dynamics
and the size of it, the head and the tail of the Web      Will search go mobile in three years?
and all those other factors. To tackle the head and
to get most of the queries that everybody, Joe aver-      Nobody disputes the potential of mobile search.
age person, is looking for you’ll need to have a sim-     The question seems to be whether search will
plified version or potentially, what’s available now,     move to the mobile platform in a meaningful way
as a search experience, what people have come to          in the next three years. Interestingly, there were
expect. And I think we all, in the industry, agree        more than a few references to the iPhone as the
that 0where we are today is great but it’s been a         current standard in mobile computing.
little stale for awhile and being able to level that up
a bit and make some major inroads in improve-             Chris Sherman: I don't think we're going to see a
ments there, is something that we’re definitely on        wholesale migration, I think it's going to be very
the verge of doing. And it may start as some sort         similar to what we have in other types of devices.
of opt in option or maybe it’s just the separate          We started with radio, with the box, and everyone
website or a separate engine that’s doing that. Or        sat around in the living room and then when the
maybe, at some point, it becomes just a toggle be-        car was invented we suddenly had mobile radio.
tween two different ones, so it brings up live.com        It's really the same thing, it's just being used in
and you get to pick what engine you want, the tur-        different places, depending on where we're going. I
bocharged version or do you want a slimmed down           think there's ultimately going to be a hard-core of
version? The challenge has always been when               users, much like Blackberry users are today, that
you’re talking about the early adopters and the           will shift their focus from the desktop to the mobile
real technical elite and the heavy searchers, a lot       device but just inherently in the size of most mobile
of those folks would love to use that but, in the         devices there's a lot of restrictions. Even the
grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty small portion       iPhone is, as good as webpage rendering is on that,
of the population.                                        it's still tiny. And I think a lot of people just aren't
                                                          going to be comfortable using that interface as a
Greg Sterling: I would point to the iGoogle home          primary way that they access the Web.
page and classic Google as validation of that point.
I think that the Yahoo homepage becoming person-          Larry Cornett: I think we've already had some
alized but I think that Google in particular has bi-      pretty decent success that you’ve seen, with our
furcated its search experience. They claim iGoogle,       OneSearch experience on the phone. I think that
which is a version of personalization because you         what's nice about where that’s going is that it's
set up all the feeds and widgets and gadgets and          actually thinking about how do I structure this in-
so on. It’s the fastest growing product they’ve got       formation so that it's easy to interact with and con-
there. Now the real numbers are going to be minis-        sume on a small screen device. I have an iPhone
cule compared to classic Google so I think you are        and even with the iPhone, with a much larger
right that there is some kind of segmentation that        screen, it's a great experience but you still don't
may emerge where you have a class of power users          want a full webpage. It's not that fun to play with
that take full advantage of a bunch of tools and          and try to zoom around and scroll. So when you
you have those who use the defaults and don’t do          look at these experiences that are tailored for a
much in the way of interacting with the engines           mobile service, it's a much different kind of experi-
                                                          ence and you really have to take into consideration

                                                                                                                     19
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
the smaller footprint and the display surface. And       within three years, but I would imagine in 10 years
     what is the most critical information to be given to     from now, there will probably be more searches on
     the user for that time and probably most critical is     a mobile or a phone device then there would be
     to realize and to be very serious about the fact,        from a PC or laptop. Because just given how, espe-
     this person for a phone and there's a reason             cially worldwide, mobile is taking shape and more
     they're doing on a phone. They're not sitting in         and more people are becoming reliant on them, I
     their office in front of a laptop and deciding to con-   think it’s absolutely going to transform itself here
     sume this experience on the phone just for the heck      in the next few years.
     of it. They're most likely out and about and what
     are the needs of someone is using a phone? This          Danny Sullivan feels that search just won’t go mo-
     goes back to the intent, when you know somebody's        bile, it will become ubiquitous. It will start appear-
     accessing your service through a mobile device,          ing in several devices, including those that come
     taking that into consideration when you’re thinking      along with us:
     about intent and what you should be bringing back
     for those searches…(for example)… using GPS so           Danny: I think that the next big trend is that, ironi-
     that it's trying to help you with that, so under-        cally from what I just said to you, search is going
     standing where you are and bringing that context         to start jumping into devices. And everything is
     to a local search is hugely beneficial.                  going to have a search box. But it will be appropri-
                                                              ate. My iPod itself will have a search capability
     Justin Osmer: And mobile is just going to get big-       within it. And the iPhone, to some degree, maybe it
     ger, including voice-enabled search, so you’ll be        will that look at how it’s happening already. But I’ll
     able to just talk into the phone, “Starbucks coffee”     be able to search, access, and get information ap-
     and it will know what corner you’re making that          propriate to that device within it.
     query from and will give you results in a radius
     around you to get to that information…In my mind         Advertising on the SERP: 2010
     I think of the comparison to broadband. It seems
     like just within the last three to five years broad-     It took a long time to get advertising on search
     band is really taken off so that’s enabled a whole       results page right. And then, when the engines
     lot of great web applications and websites and           finally did get it right it turned out that a simple
     companies to really ramp-up their online capabili-       text ad was the best. But that was within the con-
     ties and customers are able to get a very immer-         text of a linear, text based presentation of results.
     sive, exciting experience because of that. I think       Does that change significantly when our results
     you’re going to see a similar ramp-up with mobile        suddenly include images and videos in the linear
     carriers, not only with the networks themselves as       format may break up into more of a portal-based
     they upgrade and update, but also with the de-           format?
     vices. I think there’s still a ways to go with the de-
     vices and they’re only getting better. The iPhone is     Chris Sherman: I think it just creates more oppor-
     a great example. I was playing with that at the          tunities for advertising. It's got to be really inter-
     Apple store this weekend. I just bumped into a guy       esting to watch how that evolves because we
     here at the cafeteria who had one. I think the de-       started with actually a richer form of advertising,
     vices themselves and being able to navigate              arguably, with banner ads and people learned to
     through the web and being able to pull up informa-       become blind to them. It was only once we got real
     tion in a super intuitive, quick and easy way is ab-     simple basic text ads that that form of advertising
     solutely going to start to take off and I think there    really took off. So I think what we're going to see
     will be a point, and this probably won’t happen          this experimentation and a lot of creativity around

20
                 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
the different formats.                                   you see, and I don’t know if this will be in three
                                                         years, where you see small little banner ads or
Marissa Mayer: I think that there will be different      other things that are off to the side that start to
types of advertising on the search results page. As      replace the text links, just so they can continue to
you know, my theory is always that the ad should         carry some weight on the page. Because I would
match the search results. So if you have text re-        imagine if you get to the point where you ever
sults, you have text ads, and if you have image          really great search experience but the ads are hard
results, you have image ads. So as the page be-          to see, the advertisers aren’t going to be very
comes richer, the ads also need to become richer,        happy with you
just so that they look alive and match the page.
That said, trust is a fundamental premise of             Danny Sullivan: I guess the concern might be if the
search. Search is a learning activity. You think of      natural results are getting better and better why
Google and Ask and these other search engines as         would someone want to click on the ads anyway?
teachers. As an end user the only reason learning        Maybe people will reassess the paid results and
and teaching works, the only way it works, is when       some people will come through and say that paid
you trust your teacher. You know you’re getting          search results are a form of search data base as
the best information because it’s the best informa-      well. So we’re going to call them classifieds or
tion, not because they have an agenda to mislead         we’re going to call them ads, we’re going to move
you or to make more money or to push you some-           them right into the linear display. You know
where because of their own agenda. So while I do         there’ll be issues, because at least in the US, you
think the ads will look different, they will look dif-   have the FCC guidelines that say that you should
ferent in format, or they may look different in          really keep them segregated. So if you don’t high-
placement, I think our commitment to calling out         light them or blend them in some way, you might
very strongly where we have a monetary incentive         run into some regulatory problems. But then
and we may be biased will remain. Our one prom-          again, maybe those rules might start to change as
ise on our search results page, and that will stand,     the search innovation starts to change, and go with
is that we clearly mark the ads. It’s very important     it from there.
to us that the users know what the ads are because
it’s the disclosure of that bias, that ultimately        Michael Ferguson: It puts increased relevance
builds the trust which is paramount to search them       pressure on the advertising because, however that
                                                         advertising is expressed, and it might not just be
Justin Osmer: For us, it’s going to be about mak-        text ads in the future as far as optimization or buy-
ing sure that people understand that the majority        ing, it puts relevance pressure on the advertising
of the page, if you look at the page real estate, at     because they are increasingly being presented in a
least 75% of that will be the organic, and making        more varied experience with competing routes for
sure that’s clear to people. For the sponsored links,    users to take. I think that is good for end users
I think that those are going to evolve in time as        and good for advertisers and I think that search
well. It’s certainly been proven out of the market-      marketers are going to become much more, to my
place that there’s a lot of money to be made there       mind, in demand and sophisticated quickly because
and a lot of companies have become reliant on the        this is going to drive the need to coordinate a cam-
text linked ads. As the search page becomes more         paign across how you might present something
robust and, potentially, more populated with             with video, how you might present something with
graphics or a more rich experience, I think that the     audio and images to fulfill the advertising opportu-
ads will maybe need to raise up and match that in        nities that are going to come with these more rich
some respects. So that there may be a time where         pages. Another thing that we are seeing is more

                                                                                                                 21
Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
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Search engine results 2010

  • 1. Search Engine Results: 2010 What search engines may look like in the future, including personalization, universal search, eye tracking and interviews with leading industry experts By: Gord Hotchkiss Tracy Sherman Rick Tobin Cory Bates Krista Brown 2007 08 16
  • 2. What do the next three years hold for the About Enquiro Research world of search? Will the search results enquiroresearch.com page in 2010 looks similar to what we use One of North America’s leading search marketing firms, Enquiro provides online mar- today? keting and research solutions to a client base which includes several Fortune 500 com- panies. Its strategies are based on its own industry research and expertise in usability, We interviewed some of the industry's top and natural and sponsored search. Enquiro has also authored eye tracking studies analysts and thought leaders to find out. which have given marketers a greater understanding of user interaction with the major And Enquiro conducted eye tracking on search engines and defined “Google’s Golden Triangle.” some of these possible future scenarios to see how users would interact. About Gord Hotchkiss Gord has been active in the marketing and advertising industry for over 20 years and has led Enquiro to be one of North America’s fastest growing tech companies. Also the board chairperson for the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO), he is recognized as an industry thought leader who is frequently called upon as a speaker, writer and analyst. EMAIL For questions or to request a quote: sales@enquiro.com MAIL 1628 Dickson Ave., Suite 300 Kelowna, BC, Canada V1Y 9X1 PHONE Toll Free: 1.800.277.9997 Phone: 1.250.861.5252 Fax: 1.250.861.5235 2 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 3. Contents Introduction………………………………………….....4 Methodology…………………………………………....6 The Interviewees.……………………………..….....…8 The Interviews…………………………………..…….10 The Eye Tracking Study……………………...……..28 Chunking……………………………………...……….30 Fencing…………………………………………...…….34 Google: 2010?...................................................44 Time Spent on Page by Section - Buyers………....50 Time Spent on Page by Section - Buyers………....51 Implications for Marketers….….……………………54 Acknowledgements…………………………………...60 The Team………………………………………………..61 3 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 4. Introduction What does the next three years hold for the world results page have to change in order to be noticed on a richer results page? of search? Will the search results page in 2010 Search: 2010 looks similar to the search results page we’re see- ing today? At Enquiro, we have long been saying that the in- troduction of things like personalization and uni- Strategies and tactics used by marketers We seem to be at a important juncture in the his- versal search results will dramatically impact the entire world of search marketing. The rules will will have to evolve quickly and dramati- tory of search engines. To this point, most of the innovation that’s been happening with the search change significantly and the strategies and tactics cally in order to keep pace with its rate of used by marketers will have to evolve quickly and engine has been happening in the back end, im- change being seen from the engines proving and tweaking the algorithms. But in the dramatically in order to keep pace with the rate of themselves. past six months we’ve seen the beginning of what change being seen from the engines themselves. It promises to be significant changes in the actual seemed logical to us that now would be an oppor- search interface. Google’s unveiling of personal- tune time to take the pulse of the search user ex- ization and universal search together with Ask’s perience and try to see a few years into the future unveiling of 3D Search both seem to indicate that how changes may impact both the user experience the pace of change in interface design is picking and effective strategies to intercept those users. up. Why is this important? The search results So we launched an initiative to interview a select pages have remained a fairly static landscape for group of experts. First we talked to the usability the entire history of search. There has been little people at each of the major engines, Marissa Mayer “It seemed logical to us at Google, Larry Cornett at Yahoo, Justin Osmer at change in the text oriented linear presentation of that now would be an search results. The paradigm of 10 blue organic Microsoft and Michael Ferguson at Ask. Then we opportune time to take link and a handful of sponsored results has be- reached out to top industry analysts and thought the pulse of the search come fairly established amongst all the major play- leaders and chatted with each of them. This group included Danny Sullivan, Jakob Nielsen, Chris user experience and try ers. And this common presentation of results has Sherman and Greg Sterling. With each, we asked to see a few years into largely dictated what the scanning pattern of those results would be. This scanning pattern has been one simple question: what will the search results the future how changes detailed in two eye tracking results conducted by page look like in 2010? Of course, implied within may impact both the Enquiro. But all that could change in the very near this question is what will our search experience be user experience and ef- future as search engines become bolder in intro- like in 2010? And that’s perhaps the bigger ques- tion. What screen will it be happening on? With fective strategies to intercept those users.” ducing innovation into the search results page in- what intent will we be using it? terface. For example, how will increased relevancy impact This white paper not only brings together the vari- our interaction with search results? As personaliza- ous opinions from each of these industry influen- tion starts to provide the opportunity to determine cers and attempts to draw out some consistent relevancy not just by comparing it to a keyword but themes, it actually goes two steps further. We also comparing it to the intent of the user, will this took all the input we received from these experts result in a significantly different level of interaction and aggregated them into a picture of what the with the search results page? And with the intro- search results page might look like in 2010. Then duction of more types of results on the default we conducted an internal eye tracking test here at page, will we be engaged with these results in a Enquiro to see what impact things like a dramati- different manner? Will the mixing of text based cally new interface, a richer presentation of adver- website results and image-based video results tising messages, a greater degree of relevancy change how we navigate our way through those based on access to personal information and an results? Will advertising presented on the search aggregation of different types of results on the 4 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 5. same page might have on the average user. We crepancy in the degree of optimism about how conducted a series of eye tracking tests on differ- much the search experience will change in three ent types of search results pages, including a typi- years. Jakob Nielsen was probably our most prag- cal results page with universal results (as they’re matic respondent, indicating he doesn’t expect any currently being implemented on Google), personal- significant changes in the three-year framework. ized results as they may look in the next 12 Nevertheless he did speculate on three areas where months, Ask’s 3D Search, and finally, our view of we could see innovation. Contrast this with predic- what the search results page might look like in tions of rich Ajax functionality, mash ups and 2010 based on the input we received from all our multi-touch displays. experts. We’ve included the results from these eye tracking tests in this report. What we’ll do within this white paper is take all the input we received from the interviews and group “There is, without a doubt, great passion Finally, we share our thoughts about what useful them into a number of common themes. For any- about the future of search and we strongly strategies might be for search marketers in the one interested in reading the full transcripts of the believe that the next three years will rep- future. How do you successfully position yourself interviews, these are posted on Gord Hotchkiss’s to take advantage of the innovations being intro- Out of my Gord blog. resent the most exciting era yet in the duced by the search engines? How do you ensure short history of web search.” that your message will be seen on a much richer, The eye tracking studies much more functional search results page? Of course, given our research bent and our past We believe you’ll find the insights presented fasci- history with eye tracking, one couldn’t expect us to nating. It was a question that all our respondents speculate on what a search results page might look warmed up to and showed great enthusiasm for. like in 2010 without wondering how a user might There is, without a doubt, great passion about the navigate that same page. What we wanted to do future of search and we strongly believe that the was create some comparisons of what interactions next three years will represent the most exciting may look like given some of the innovation that’s era yet in the short history of web search. creeping onto the page. We set up an internal test- ing framework that created four different versions Search Engine Results: 2010 of similar sets of search results. First of all, we recorded interactions with the results pages to rep- The choice of 2010 as the target date for our resent the current user experience on Google. We speculation was more a matter of looking for a nice gave our participants scenarios that would result in round number than any deliberate thought, but as the presentation of universal search results. it turned out, the setting of the three-year horizon proved to be an interesting one. It was just far Then, we presented scenarios and (based on past enough ahead that it was difficult to extrapolate history and comments from participants) created based on current work being done at the engines, personalized results in a slightly more aggressive yet it wasn’t far enough out to allow for total blue presentation than that currently seen on Google. sky brainstorming. Almost without exception all our interviewees made comment about how chal- Finally, we took all the input from all our interviews lenging they found the three-year framework to and asked our designer, Cory Bates, to put to- predict within. It forced us to balance practicality gether a sample of what a search results page with bold predictions. might look like in 2010. We presented the results to our participants and recorded interactions using Despite this, there was an amazing amount of dis- our eye tracking system. 5 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 6. Methodology Methodology • Preferred search engine is Google, and, Objectives • Informed consent given by each individual to track their web history over a period of a three The overall objective of the study is to compare individual eye tracking sessions. universal search against personalized search using Google’s Search Engine. Specifically the questions Universal Search we want to answer are the following: Each person was given three tasks to research an • Does personalization have an effect on the iPhone, Harry Potter and the Spice Girls. These time spent on a SERP? tasks were chosen because of the presence of uni- versal Google results (video, blogs, news, images, • The hypothesis is that personalized search re- etc.). sults will increase time spent on a SERP due to the increased relevancy in the results. Task Scenarios • What is the search behavior on a multi-paned You have been hearing a lot about Apple's new site, ASK.com versus Google? iPhone recently and would like to know if it's some- thing you should invest in. Use the following set of • Does the scan pattern vary depending on the results to learn more about it. user’s commercial or non-commercial intent for 2010 SERP? What is the user interaction? The new Harry Potter movie, "The Order of the Phoenix" is due to come out in the next few weeks and you have a 10 year old nephew that would like Rationale for Study Design nothing more than to watch it with you. Use the following set of results to decide if he is old In order to investigate the above objectives we enough to watch it. chose to focus on Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). This engine was chosen so that com- This just in! The Spice Girls have decided to re- parisons can be made to previous baseline eye unite for a worldwide tour later this year. This tracking results. This involved a series of related news has "train wreck" written all over it and you eye tracking tasks to test engagement of users can't wait to get a ticket. Use the following set of with universal, personalized, ASK.com and a futur- results to learn more about their upcoming tour. istic rendition of what a 2010 SERP may look like. Limitations of the study included users giving con- Personalization sent to track their web history. Each person was logged into a single secured Google Account to track web history on a Google Eye Tracking Methodology Details search for iPhones. The URLs for all the pages they viewed were analyzed and selected based on a few Panel recruitment: factors: time spent on different online media (news, customer reviews, local results, blogs, and • 16 people between the ages of 24 and 55, sponsored sites such as the Apple Store) and the purchase phase of their search. 6 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 7. Google SERP pages were then mocked up for each person depending on where they finished off their last search. The positions that were personalized were Top Sponsored #2 (stayed consistent for each person – “iPhone in Canada”) and Organic results 3, 4 and 5. Each person was presented their personalized search results page and we tracked eye movement and engagement with the personalized and non- personalized content on the page. Task Scenarios Assume you are interested in learning more about the iPhone and so, have performed a search for iPhone on Google. Interact with the following page layout and click on the item that you would click- through on. Assume you are interested in purchasing the iPhone and so, have performed a search for iPhone on Google. Interact with the following page layout and click on the item that you would click-through on. ASK Similarly, to measure fixations and time spent on a multi-paned search engine, each person was asked to search for Harry Potter on ASK.com. 2010 All users were asked to review the 2010 SERP and were presented one of two mock-ups that was de- pendant on whether they were in the research or purchase phase of the buying process. 7 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 8. The Interviewees Jakob Nielsen Larry Cornett Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is Larry Cornett is Vice “If I ever had to build a a User Advocate and President of Search Ex- search engine, or more principal of the Nielsen perience at Yahoo! Before precisely, the interface Norman Group which he that, he led the eBay team co-founded with Dr. focused on Tailored Shop- of a search engine, this Donald A. Norman ping Experiences, Plat- would be the team I (former VP of research form, and International would want to bring at Apple Computer). sites. He Apple’s designer together.” Until 1998 he was a Sun for the Finder in Mac OS Microsystems Distin- 8, 9, and OS X and guished Engineer. worked at IBM working on database and develop- ment software. He was a principal consultant at an Dr. Nielsen founded the "discount usability engi- interaction design agency he founded, working on neering" movement for fast and cheap improve- desktop, web, and mobile solutions. He received ments of user interfaces and has invented several his Ph.D. in HCI Psychology from Rice University usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. and holds multiple patents for his work on web- He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways based products and hardware solutions. of making the Internet easier to use. Marissa Mayer Greg Sterling Marissa leads the prod- Greg Sterling is the found- uct management efforts ing principal of Sterling on Google's search prod- Market Intelligence, a con- ucts She joined Google sulting and research firm in 1999 as Google's first focused on the Internet's female engineer. Several impact on local consumer patents have been filed and advertisers behavior. on her work in artificial He also is a Senior Analyst intelligence and inter- for Local Mobile Search, an face design. advisory service from Opus Research. Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland and at Before Sterling Market Intelligence, Sterling ran The SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media program. Prior to The Kelsey Group, Sterling was at TechTV Graduating with honors, Marissa received her B.S. where he helped produce "Working the Web," a na- in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Sci- tional television show dedicated to e-business and ence from Stanford University. For both degrees, the Internet. Before TechTV he was a founding edi- she specialized in artificial intelligence. tor and executive producer at AllBusiness.com. 8 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 9. Michael Ferguson Chris Sherman Michael Ferguson is Sen- Chris Sherman is Execu- ior User Experience Ana- tive Editor of SearchEn- lyst for Ask.com. Look- gineLand.com and Presi- ing at motivations, be- dent of Searchwise LLC, a havior, and experience Boulder Colorado based through culture, technol- Web consulting firm. He ogy, and psychology, he is the author of a number informs product develop- of books on search en- ment with user context gines and programming, Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid and design strategy. including “Google Power: Before joining Ask, Mi- Unleash the Full Power of Google” and “The Invisi- chael ran an interactive design agency with clients ble Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search that included Oracle and Stanford's Graduate Engines Can’t See” (with Gary Price). Chris holds a School of Business, as well as independent film master's degree in Interactive Educational Technol- makers and film festivals. Michael holds a B.A. in ogy from Stanford University and a bachelor's de- British and American Literature from New College gree in Visual Arts and Communications from the of Florida. University of California, San Diego. Danny Sullivan Justin Osmer Widely considered a Sr. Product Manager, Live leading "search engine Search, Microsoft Corp.. guru," Danny Sullivan Justin’s career started in has helped many under- the early 1990’s as a stand how search en- communications profes- gines work for over a sional and he first worked decade. Danny has been in Search in the late 90’s quoted in The Wall St. on the “client side” manu- Journal, USA Today, The ally submitting URL’s to Los Angeles Times, Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Forbes, The New Yorker Excite. Since that time he and Newsweek and ABC's Nightline. Danny began has been in multiple marketing communications covering search engines in late 1995 with "A Web- and product management roles across multiple master's Guide To Search Engines," later expanding industries and is currently in his fourth year at Mi- the guide into Search Engine Watch, serving as edi- crosoft. As Sr. Product Manager on Search Justin tor-in-chief through November 2006. Now he heads works with the Live Search engineering and devel- up Search Engine Land as editor-in-chief, taking it opment team as well as the marketing team to de- into the next generation of search coverage. Danny velop and introduce the Microsoft Web Search ex- is also Third Door Media's chief content officer. perience to millions worldwide. 9 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 10. Search: 2010 If I ever had to build a search engine, or more pre- to the page. We have some sponsored ads on top, ten blue organic links and generally some spon- cisely, the interface of a search engine, this would sored ads on the left side. It’s a very linear format The Interviews be the team I would want to bring together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three that runs from top to bottom and is almost always years and speculating on what the search results composed exclusively of text. And although this page may look like in 2010, these are the names format has refined itself over the past decade, that immediately came to mind: there haven’t been any significant changes to the look. Will that continue to be true in the next three Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known usability years? guru Marissa Mayer: I think it will be, hopefully, a lay- Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search User out that’s a little bit less linear and text based, Experience and interface design even than our search results today and ultimately use what I call the ‘sea of whiteness’ more in the Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of middle of the page, and lays out in a more infor- “It’s a huge dominant user be- Ask’s unique user experience mation dense way all the information from videos havior to scan a linear list and Larry Cornett, the VP of user experience at to audio reels to text, and so on and so forth. So if so this attempt to put other Yahoo you imagine the results page, instead of being long and linear, and having ten results on the page that things on the side, to tamper Justin Osmer, product manager for Microsoft you can scroll through to having ten very heteroge- with the true layout, the true lie search neous results, where we show each of those results design of the page, to move from it being in a form that really suits their medium, and in a Chris Sherman, executive editor of Searchen- more condensed format. When you started seeing just a list, it’s going to be difficult” gineland and always thoughtful industry ob- some diagrams, some video, some news, some server charts, you might actually have a page that looks Greg Sterling, another industry analyst who and feels more like an interactive encyclopedia. To always has interesting insights, particularly in keep hounding on the analogy of the front page of to the local and mobile world the New York Times. It’s not like the New York Times…I mean they have basically the same layout Danny Sullivan, the Go to Guy of search each time, but it’s not like they have a column that only has this kind of content, and if it doesn’t fill This would be the dream team for designing the the column, too bad. They have a basic format new search interface. So it was with a great deal of that they change as it suits the information. anticipation that I threw the same question in front of all of them : What will the search results page Jakob Nielsen: There could be small changes, look like in 2010? Here, aggregated and con- there could be big changes. I don’t think big densed, are their answers. I've broken them into changes. The small changes are, potentially, a themes that consistently came out in these inter- change from the one dimensional linear layout to views. more of a two dimensional layout with different types of information, presented in different parts The look of the search results page of the page so you could have more of a newspaper metaphor in terms of the layout. I’m not sure if The search results page has defined itself into an that’s going to happen. It’s a huge dominant user accepted standard. With the exception of Ask3D, behavior to scan a linear list and so this attempt to all the other major players have a very similar look put other things on the side, to tamper with the 10 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 11. true layout, the true design of the page, to move ies; we recently launched travel and, most recently from it being just a list, it’s going to be difficult, music, so music artists. And essentially that's but I think it’s a possibility. There’s a lot of things, bringing a lot of very useful information from dif- types of information that the search engines are ferent sources together in one place. And so users crunching on, and one approach is to unify them don't have to click and go one place to see the all into one list based on it’s best guess as to rele- trailer, click and go to another place to see infor- vance or importance or whatever, and that is what mation about the movie and ratings, click to yet I think is most likely to happen. But it could also be another place to get show times for their local city. that they decide to split it up, and say, well, out It's actually all brought to the user in one compact here to the right we’ll put shopping results, and out module so it's all that information that they would here to the left we’ll put news results, and down find useful in one place. I can't speak to what here at the bottom we’ll put pictures, and so forth, Google is up to but they obviously must realize that and I think that’s a possibility. a home page with nothing but a search box isn't quite serving everything that people want. And Larry Cornett:The search experience is becoming a they launched iGoogle, obviously, for that reason. lot more interactive, it's a lot more of a dynamic “The search experience is be- experience and we’re all experimenting with bring- So let’s venture one step further. What if this coming a lot more interactive, ing back a lot of richer content. And rich meta search portal, iGoogle, let’s us enter a query and it it's a lot more of a dynamic ex- data, structured data, much more than we ever builds a page for us which appears as a new tab, were doing before. It's going beyond the simple complete with a mix of results, based on the en- perience and we’re all experi- text title and abstract and URL, right. gine’s understanding of where we’re at and what menting with bringing back a lot our intent is. I put that to Justin Osmer (without the of richer content. ” iGoogle part): Does search become our own personal portal page? Justin Osmer: Yes, I can see that very easily. And we’ve just scratched the surface on that with As search engines get to know us better, do they live.com. You can set up a personalized page on become our home page for everything? Do search live.com and pull in search results. You can set it engines get smart enough to bring together all the up so that it queries news results for you everyday. information we need about any topic, at our re- You get fresh news results on a query that you al- quest, and organize it into a rich portal like page ways search on, you can bring in all sorts of RSS that gives us a jumping off point into a number of feeds from literally the whole web, so you’re con- different types of content. It used to be that stantly getting updates of feeds very easily and you search was a “get on, get off” task but increasingly, can subscribe to an interest area of search and get search is becoming a stickier experience. Google, that populated for yourself. That absolutely is a probably the clearest example of the “tool based” scenario that makes a lot of sense. approach to search, has recently acknowledged the importance of personalized homepages with the introduction of iGoogle, moving them much closer Search as a social experience to a Yahoo type model. Personalization has somewhat pushed social search Larry Cornett: I think one place that you’ve seen to the back burner as a promise for the future. But us doing a bit of that is with what we call our WOW increasingly, the social nature of the web is con- experiences. And so we launched a few of the mov- verging with search in more and more cases. Will ies, it's like a direct display; it's a really rich direct the next three years see a furthering of this conver- display on the search page. We've launched mov- gence and the blending of Web communities and 11 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 12. search functionality? Larry Cornett: And that's having more of a human Smarter search engines influence and obviously more of a human presence in the search experience. You'll see that quite a bit Another major theme was not so much what search with the way that StumbleUpon has been working, engines would look like but how they would get the things that we've done with image search with smarter in the background. Driving this would be a tighter integration of Flickr images and really factors like personalization and tweaking of algo- showing the attribution that those photographs rithms. coming from real people within the network. Larry’s comment made me think of a future where Personalization we may stay within our favorite online communities more and look for search functionality to be Talk of personalization has pretty much dominated brought into that environment. And in that environ- the search engine space for the last two or three “I don't really see any kind of ment, will search become more of a discovery tool months. Our panel seems somewhat split on the dramatic breakthrough on the then a navigational tool? Will search leverage the promise of personalization to significantly move benefits of the community to help make sugges- the needle on relevance in the next three years. horizon...And it's not because tions in less task focused situations? people aren’t trying, it's because Chris Sherman: I don't really see any kind of dra- of those inherent ambiguities in Larry Cornett: You talk about Facebook, you talk matic breakthrough on the horizon. I think as long language.” about some of these other examples where people as we’re limited to the current search form factor, may have a fuzzier information need or a different if you will, where we’re encouraged to do the juke- type of desire for information. In many cases, im- box approach, where we punch in a few keywords, age search for example, people use it for entertain- pull the lever and hope to get the jackpot. Lan- ment and so they're using it to pass the time or guage is so inherently ambiguous that as good as they're just curious. And in those cases, it's not the search engine gets, as good as they are at ob- like they have really specific targeted goals in mind serving our behavior and our habits of reading and or very specific queries in mind even, but they're so on, being limited to those very, very short que- pretty open to being given information, so you'll ries, that's really the governor on the whole thing. see that with Facebook, a lot of that is you coming Until search engines can find a way to let us in and just understanding what's going on within search, for example, by submitting a page of con- your network and that activity. And so you're tent and analyzing the full text of that page and learning about things that you may not have even then tying that in conjunction with our past behav- formed a query about. Your friend's telling you ior, that's just one approach, there's a whole vari- about a new website that you wouldn't even know ety of ways we can go about doing it, but I just to ask about on a search engine. You discover it don't see any thing major. And it's not because because he tells you about it. StumbleUpon is very people aren’t trying, it's because of those inherent similar in that you want to see what people con- ambiguities in language. sider to be quality content and you don't know ex- actly what you're looking for, but you just press the Danny Sullivan: I think personalized search is go- stumble button and see what are people thinking is ing to continue to get strong. I do think that interesting right now. So this is definitely, I think, Google is on to something with their personalized a lot of convergence in some of these areas. search results. I don’t think that they’re going to cause you to be in an Amazon situation where 12 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 13. you’re continuing to be recommended stuff you’re ingful difference. no longer interested in. I think that people are mis- understanding how sophisticated it can be. Larry Cornett: I think we’re just barely on the tip of the iceberg with how useful it could be. I think Jakob Nielsen: All this stuff, all this talk about per- traditional approaches to personalization have re- sonalization, is incredibly hard to do. Partly be- quired a lot of work on the part of the user and I cause it’s not just personalization, based on a user think, just given my experience over the past years model, which is hard enough already. You have to in various places, at different companies and work- guess that this person prefers this style of content ing for software and the Web, people don't like to and so on. But furthermore, you have to guess as spend a lot of time configuring their preferences. to what this person’s “in this minute” interest is So anytime you try to take an easier approach and and that is almost impossible to do. I’m not too say I’ll let the user customize experience or person- optimistic on the ability to do that. In many ways I alize it, it'll work for a small number of users that think the web provides self personalization, you care to invest but the large majority don't want to know, self service personalization. I show you my have spend a lot of time doing that. So I think the navigational scheme of things you can do on my key to personalization is actually finding a way to “My point of view is that there is site and you pick the one you want today, and the do that in a way that requires very low investment a PR and political challenge job of the web designer is to, first of all, design from the user and it has a lot of return. And so it’s around privacy and the so called choices that adequately meet common user needs, finding that balance of trying to get that just right and secondly, simply explain these choices so peo- so that the user gets a lot more value than they creep factor that people feel ple can make the right ones for them. And that’s have to put energy into it. when they think that the engine what most sites do very poorly. Both of those two is studying them and monitoring their be- steps are done very poorly on most corporate web- I then asked Larry if 3 years was too short a time havior and that record somehow makes sites. But when it’s done well, that leads to people for personalization to make a significant differ- them vulnerable or makes them uncom- being able to click–click and they have what they ence: want, because they know what they want, and its fortable. ” very difficult for the computer to guess what they Larry Cornett: You know, in the past I might've want in this minute. said yes but I think there's an increasing pace of change that’s occurred within this industry. And I Greg Sterling: I think there are some technical is- think that three years is not too long, within the sues like, what does it mean, and what does that next three years I think we'll definitely have a lot look like. You and I doing the same queries over a more answers and I think there's so many people period of time, what would our results look like? Is that are springing up in this space, playing around there a real benefit there for us? We could probably with all these startup experiences for search that argue in some cases yes, I would point to the local the velocity definitely increase. I think that's we'll as an example. I think there is a political challenge, see something soon. right? My point of view is that there is a PR and political challenge around privacy and the so called Justin Osmer brought up a variation on personal- creep factor that people feel when they think that ization with mode based search, where engines the engine is studying them and monitoring their become smarter at unraveling the intent of the behavior and that record somehow makes them user: vulnerable or makes them uncomfortable. But I do think it is a potentially significant advance in cer- Justin: An area that we’re focusing on over here at tain contexts, if it really goes to disambiguation. Live search is thinking more about the mode in Yes, I think in certain cases it does make a mean- which people are in when they’re using search. 13 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 14. Are they exploring, just kind of poking around, or truly researching something? Are they looking to purchase something? Are they in there simply for entertainment refreshment sake? So they just need five minutes to goof off and poke around and look Is Google holding a number of personalization up vacations or something. Then being able to cards up their sleeve? present the results in a way that give you that full spectrum of experience, so that the modes of con- So obviously, the opinions on the effectiveness of sumption will dictate how much you get in line, so personalization are mixed. But I can’t help won- the verticals in essence will become obsolete. The dering if Google is holding a significant portion of same rich content that you might get in a vertical the effectiveness of their personalization algorithm experience may be brought inline or brought onto in reserve, pending further testing on the beta the results page in a way that shows you, wow, the dataset they’re currently collecting. I posed this search engine really does have more here, in a possibility to Chris Sherman. unique way. Chris: I suspect that there's probably quite a bit Osmer said this “mode identification” could be ac- more that they're not showing but I don't know that complished in a few ways, including personaliza- it’s necessarily that they're being secretive. I think tion: there's caution that changing things too much might alienate the searcher with the search results. Justin: I think we’re getting close to a tipping point I think if they got things that they are able to do, on personalization where people are going to figure we’ll start to see them gradually, in a testing fash- out that, “Wow, I can get a lot more out of my ion, where a few users will be exposed to it and search experience if I tell the search engine more over time, yes, they'll be rolled out. But honestly, I about me.” And so it may require some one-time don't know, that's just speculation on my part. But setup time charge to you, to go in and say you like with the number of people that are working on this this or you don’t like this, or you want this or you stuff, they probably have tons of stuff that they're don’t want this, or simply just clicking a box that not showing us. says “Yes, I okay the search engine to track my queries, or look at my clickstream and give me Search driven by Query Trends more relevant information or I want to participate in a beta product that allows me to tell the search Danny Sullivan brought up the fact that search en- engine what I’m looking for so it can learn more gines, with their access to query volumes and about me or people like me. trends, should be able to alter the results for ex- traordinary circumstances: The other way would be by using the query itself as a determiner: Danny: I think they’re going to get a lot more intel- ligent at giving you more from a particular data- Justin: We know what the super popular queries base when they know you’re doing a specific a kind are on a day-to-day basis and usually they fall into of search. It’s not necessarily an interface change, a category and so if we know the “Paris Hilton”, but then again it is. This is the thing I talked about that’s an area where you’re probably in an enter- when the London Car Bombing attempt happened, tainment mode and so we would try and offer up a and I’m searching for “London Bombings”. When user experience of search results page that would you see a spike in certain words you ought to know be more tuned that way that there’s a reason behind that spike. It’s going 14 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 15. to be news driven probably, so why are you giving through application or operating system integra- me 10 search results, why don’t you give me 10 tion. Not surprisingly, this was brought up by news results? Justin Osmer from Microsoft, who has long been promising this integration. Chris Sherman also Will usefulness become part of a search algo- brought it up as another signal to disambiguate rithm? intent: A tantalizing tidbit of prediction was touched on by Justin: From a Microsoft perspective, also being a few different people, notably Jakob Nielsen and able (when you’re in Office) to search while you’re Marissa Mayer. As we begin interacting with our writing a Word document; to just do a right-click search results and websites, will the notion of use- and boom, you’re searching on the term you just fulness be factored into future search algorithms? highlighted. And you’re able to set up a search Jakob Nielsen brought up the possibility. default to whatever engine you want. Some of that technology is there today but we’re going to be Jakob: I think we can see a change maybe being a doing more and more that I think. more of a usefulness relevance ranking. I think there is a tendency now for a lot of not very useful Chris: Until search engines can find a way let us results to be dredged up that happen to be very search by submitting a page of content and analyz- popular, like Wikipedia and various blogs. They’re ing the full text of that page and then tying that in not going to be very useful or substantial to people conjunction with our past behavior, that's just one who are trying to solve problems. So I think that approach. with counting links and all of that, there may be a change and we may go into a more behavioral The semantic search engine? judgment as to which sites actually solve people’s problems, and they will tend to be more highly When will Web 2.0 come to search? To this point, ranked. search is still a fairly rudimentary experience, com- pared to the innovation seen through the rest of And then, without prompting, Marissa Mayer indi- the web. The text based presentation and the typi- cated this may be in Google’s thinking in the future cal blue hyperlinks look more like the web of 1996 as well. She talked about people marking up than the web of 2007. Will that change in the next search results and webpages and interacting with three years? Well, it actually has already started to them in a way that indicated that they found them change. The experience presented on Ask3D useful and valuable. Search rolls in much more functionality than we’ve typically seen on a search results page. And this Marissa: I think the presentation is going to be seems to be acting as a catalyst for all the search largely based on our perceived notion of relevance, engines to look at rolling in more functionality. which of course leverages the user, in the ways Ajax and other richer programming environments they interact with the page, and looks at what they will make the user experience more intuitive and do and that helps inform us as to what we should seamless. do. Marissa: We will be able to have much more rich Contextual Search interaction with the search results pages, there might be layers of search results pages: take my Another area of innovation is launching a search results and show them on a map, take my results from within the context of a task or an application and show them to me on a timeline. It’s basically 15 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 16. the ability to interact in a really fast way, and take topic for that decade”. They just help you visualize the results you have and see them in a new light. the nut of information across all the results in these fundamentally different ways that ‘sort’ kind of gets at. But it’s really allowing that richer pres- entation and that overview of results on the meta But it’s not just search engine results pages that level that helps you see it. Marissa sees a higher level of interaction with. She sees a deeper or more interactive experience with Danny Sullivan also touched on the same theme: all web pages by being able to annotate and markup pages for future reference. Danny: I think the most dramatic change in how we present search results, really has come off of Marissa: I think that people will be annotating local. And people go “wow, these maps are really search results pages and web pages a lot. They’re cool!” Well of course they’re really cool, they’re pre- going to be rating them, they’re going to be review- senting information on a map which makes sense ing them. They’re going to be marking them up, when we’re talking about local information. You saying “I want to come back to this one later”. So want things displayed in that kind of manner. It we have some remedial forms of this in terms of doesn’t make sense to take all web search results Notebook now, but I imagine that we’re going to and put them on a map. You could do it, but it make notes right on the pages later. People are doesn’t communicate additional information for going to be able to say I want to add a note here; I you that’s probably irrelevant and that needs to be want to Google something there, and you’ll be able presented in a visual manner. If you think about to do that. the other kinds of search that you tend to do, Blog search for instance, it may be that there’s going to Marissa Mayer also talks about the ability to sort be a more chronological display, much like what we results based on different dimensions, such as lo- saw them do with news archive where they would cation and time. do a search and they would tell you this happened within these years at this time. Right now when I Marissa: What I’m sort of imagining is that in the do a Google blog search, by default it shows me first basic search, you’re presented with a really ‘most relevant’. But sometimes I want to know rich general overview page, that interweaves all what the most recent thing is, and what’s the most these different mediums, and on that page you recent thing that’s also the most relevant thing have a few basic controls, so you could say, look, right? So perhaps when I do a Google blog search, I what really matters to me is the time dimension, or can see something running down the left hand side what really matters to me is the location dimen- that says “last hour” and within the last hour you sion. So you want to see it on a timeline, do you show me the most relevant things in the last hour, want to see it on a map? It’s a richer experience. the last 4 hours, and then the last day. And you What’s nice about timeline and date (as we’re cur- could present it that way, almost sort of a timeline rently experimenting with them on Google Experi- metaphor, I’m sure there are probably things you mental) is not only do they allow you to sort differ- could do with shading and other stuff to go along ently, they allow you to visualize your results dif- with that. ferently. So if you see your results on a map, you can see the loci, so you can see this location is im- …if you really want to talk about search interfaces, portant to this query, and that location is really what will be really fun to envision is what happens important to that query. And when you look at it when Ajax starts coming along and doing other in time line you can see, “wow, this is a really hot things. Can I start putting the sponsored search 16 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 17. results where they are hovering above other re- think we'll see search results actually changed dy- sults? Is there another issue that comes with that? namically in real time as we apply those various There may be some confusion as to why I was get- tools. ting this and I was getting that, can I pop up a map as I hover over a result? I could deliver you a stan- dard set of search results and I can also deliver you local results on top of a particular type of pic- Danny Sullivan feels it depends on the task. ture. If I move my mouse along it I could show you a preview of what you get in local and you might Danny: If you’re just doing a general search, I go “Oh wow, there’s a whole map there” and jump don’t think that putting a whole lot of functionality off in that direction. That would be quite useful to is going to help you, you could put a lot of options see that stuff come off of there. But right now I there and historically we haven’t seen people use just don’t see anything coming out of it. What we those things, and I think that’s because they just typically have had when people have played with want to do their searches. They want you to just the interface is, these really weird things like, ‘well naturally get the right kind of information that’s we’ll fly you though the results, or we’ll group there and a lot of the time they give you that direct them’. None of which is really something that answer. You don’t need to do a lot of manipula- you’d need added to the choices, do I want to go “I think what they might do is tion. It’s a different thing I think when you get into vertical, do I not want to go vertical? a lot of vertical, very task orientated kinds of start to expose some of those searches, where you’re saying, ‘I don’t just need algorithms and some of those More of a hands-on experience with greater the quick answer, I don’t just need to browse and knobs and dials to let us dial- functionality exposed to users see all the things that are out there, but actually up or dial-out with certain per- I’m trying to drill down on this subject in a particu- The nature of our interaction with the search re- lar way’. Local tends to be a great example. ‘Now sonalization features and fine-tune their sults page is fairly static. We look and we click. you’ve given me all the results that match the zip search results using controls that are Any attempt to incorporate more functionality on code, but really I would like to narrow it down into more similar to what you'd find on Photo- the results page, in the form of filtering options, a neighborhood, so how can I do that?’ Or a shop- shop where we've got sliders and dolls or has been met, on the most part, with apathy from ping search. ‘I have a lot of results but now I want various graphic displays.” users. Even the advanced search functionality to buy something, so now I need to know who has it that’s been around for over a decade is used by a in inventory? Now I really need to know who has it very small percentage of users. Are we ready as cheapest? And I need to know who’s the most users to get our hands on the buttons and dials trusted merchant?’ Then I think the searcher is that could fine-tune our search? Will search be- going to be willing to do more work on the search come more of an interactive experience? and make use of more of the options that you give to them. Chris Sherman saw us getting our hands on the buttons and levers that power personalization: Jakob Nielsen believes it’s a possibility, but one he’s not too optimistic about: Chris: I think what they might do is start to expose some of those algorithms and some of those knobs Jakob: The third one is to add more tools to the and dials to let us dial-up or dial-out with certain search interface to provide query reformulation personalization features and fine-tune their search and query refinement options. I’m also very skepti- results using controls that are more similar to cal about this, because this has been tried a lot of what you'd find on Photoshop where we've got slid- times and it has always failed. If you go back and ers and dolls or various graphic displays. And I look at old screen shots of all of the different 17 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 18. search engines that have been out there over the stuff and I think that in the light of keyword query last 15 years or so, there have been a lot of at- string lengths, which has stagnated I think, I don’t tempts to do things like this. People are basically know where the high point of the bell curve is…it’s lazy, and this makes sense. The basic information like two or three words. Norvig talks about getting foraging theory, which is, I think, the one theory people to interact more with the search engine so that basically explains why the web is the way it is, the result can be better right and he’s saying…he’s says that people want to expend minimal effort to sort of admitting with his implied conversation gain their benefits. And this is an evolutionary about speech recognition or speech input that you point that has come about because the creatures can’t really get people to formulate these coherent who don’t exert themselves are the ones most likely questions or longer query strings and you have to to survive when there are bad times or a crisis of find alternative strategies so some mix of active some kind. So people are inherently lazy and don’t solicitation or tools that make it fun or interesting want to exert themselves. Picking from a set of and then passive personalization or other strategies choices is one of the least effortful interaction styles to get people a better result. which is why this point and click interaction in gen- “I think this will be true in eral seems to work very well. Whereas, tweaking Stratification of user functionality 2010, the text results are still sliders or operating pull-down menus and all that stuff, is just more work. So, if the search engine is going to ask more of us a very important visual part as users, in return for giving us greater control over of the page. They do not nec- Michael Ferguson: It’s our job to go out of our way defining our search experience, will we run into the essarily look as sexy as some to make something as quickly navigable and easy to same problem we currently have with advanced video or some audio but that use as possible without [users] having to make any search? Will those features only appeal to a small is the core of the experience and that’s effort or set preferences, etc. We are always fo- percentage of users who are comfortable rolling up cused on what is the fastest flow for people to get to their sleeves and interacting with the engine? And why we still have those in the prominent the core of what they are trying to get to out of the will this mean that we'll have two versions of placing that we do. So my sense is you’re search results, so as far as bringing more steps search, one for power users and one for the rest of not going to be able to ask the users to do onto the page …it has to be done with respect to the us? work, their footsteps will walk to the ex- users intent and goals and really cannot compete perience that is most delightful and easy with that. I think this will be true in 2010, the text Chris Sherman: I don't think so. I think most people results are still a very important visual part of the live with the results that they get. Right now, today for them to use. page. They do not necessarily look as sexy as some we have advanced search and nobody uses it. video or some audio but that is the core of the ex- There are a lot of tools are really allow power users perience and that’s why we still have those in the to get in and do a lot of fine-tuning of their queries prominent placing that we do. So my sense is and I'd say less than 1%, actually take advantage of you’re not going to be able to ask the users to do that functionality. So I think as we evolve and those work, their footsteps will walk to the experience tools do surface, you're still have the vast majority that is most delightful and easy for them to use. of people happy with the result that they get but it's still going to be that 1% of people that are currently Greg Sterling: You will get more participation if it’s using advanced search that will take advantage of easy, if it’s fun, if it’s effective and makes the ex- the surfacing of those capabilities. But, that said, if perience better. If I do travel research and I can they make it easy enough so it's more like doing quickly capture and copy and save hotels, destina- something like playing around with Photoshop or tions or whatever and manipulate and come back to some of the other graphics editors and it's intui- those, that kind of thing is valuable. But you make tively obvious then we might see people gradually a fair point about putting a burden on users to do start gravitating towards that and taking advan- 18 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 19. tage of those tools. Justin Osmer: There will always be the one-size- fits-all option, just based on pure market dynamics and the size of it, the head and the tail of the Web Will search go mobile in three years? and all those other factors. To tackle the head and to get most of the queries that everybody, Joe aver- Nobody disputes the potential of mobile search. age person, is looking for you’ll need to have a sim- The question seems to be whether search will plified version or potentially, what’s available now, move to the mobile platform in a meaningful way as a search experience, what people have come to in the next three years. Interestingly, there were expect. And I think we all, in the industry, agree more than a few references to the iPhone as the that 0where we are today is great but it’s been a current standard in mobile computing. little stale for awhile and being able to level that up a bit and make some major inroads in improve- Chris Sherman: I don't think we're going to see a ments there, is something that we’re definitely on wholesale migration, I think it's going to be very the verge of doing. And it may start as some sort similar to what we have in other types of devices. of opt in option or maybe it’s just the separate We started with radio, with the box, and everyone website or a separate engine that’s doing that. Or sat around in the living room and then when the maybe, at some point, it becomes just a toggle be- car was invented we suddenly had mobile radio. tween two different ones, so it brings up live.com It's really the same thing, it's just being used in and you get to pick what engine you want, the tur- different places, depending on where we're going. I bocharged version or do you want a slimmed down think there's ultimately going to be a hard-core of version? The challenge has always been when users, much like Blackberry users are today, that you’re talking about the early adopters and the will shift their focus from the desktop to the mobile real technical elite and the heavy searchers, a lot device but just inherently in the size of most mobile of those folks would love to use that but, in the devices there's a lot of restrictions. Even the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty small portion iPhone is, as good as webpage rendering is on that, of the population. it's still tiny. And I think a lot of people just aren't going to be comfortable using that interface as a Greg Sterling: I would point to the iGoogle home primary way that they access the Web. page and classic Google as validation of that point. I think that the Yahoo homepage becoming person- Larry Cornett: I think we've already had some alized but I think that Google in particular has bi- pretty decent success that you’ve seen, with our furcated its search experience. They claim iGoogle, OneSearch experience on the phone. I think that which is a version of personalization because you what's nice about where that’s going is that it's set up all the feeds and widgets and gadgets and actually thinking about how do I structure this in- so on. It’s the fastest growing product they’ve got formation so that it's easy to interact with and con- there. Now the real numbers are going to be minis- sume on a small screen device. I have an iPhone cule compared to classic Google so I think you are and even with the iPhone, with a much larger right that there is some kind of segmentation that screen, it's a great experience but you still don't may emerge where you have a class of power users want a full webpage. It's not that fun to play with that take full advantage of a bunch of tools and and try to zoom around and scroll. So when you you have those who use the defaults and don’t do look at these experiences that are tailored for a much in the way of interacting with the engines mobile service, it's a much different kind of experi- ence and you really have to take into consideration 19 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 20. the smaller footprint and the display surface. And within three years, but I would imagine in 10 years what is the most critical information to be given to from now, there will probably be more searches on the user for that time and probably most critical is a mobile or a phone device then there would be to realize and to be very serious about the fact, from a PC or laptop. Because just given how, espe- this person for a phone and there's a reason cially worldwide, mobile is taking shape and more they're doing on a phone. They're not sitting in and more people are becoming reliant on them, I their office in front of a laptop and deciding to con- think it’s absolutely going to transform itself here sume this experience on the phone just for the heck in the next few years. of it. They're most likely out and about and what are the needs of someone is using a phone? This Danny Sullivan feels that search just won’t go mo- goes back to the intent, when you know somebody's bile, it will become ubiquitous. It will start appear- accessing your service through a mobile device, ing in several devices, including those that come taking that into consideration when you’re thinking along with us: about intent and what you should be bringing back for those searches…(for example)… using GPS so Danny: I think that the next big trend is that, ironi- that it's trying to help you with that, so under- cally from what I just said to you, search is going standing where you are and bringing that context to start jumping into devices. And everything is to a local search is hugely beneficial. going to have a search box. But it will be appropri- ate. My iPod itself will have a search capability Justin Osmer: And mobile is just going to get big- within it. And the iPhone, to some degree, maybe it ger, including voice-enabled search, so you’ll be will that look at how it’s happening already. But I’ll able to just talk into the phone, “Starbucks coffee” be able to search, access, and get information ap- and it will know what corner you’re making that propriate to that device within it. query from and will give you results in a radius around you to get to that information…In my mind Advertising on the SERP: 2010 I think of the comparison to broadband. It seems like just within the last three to five years broad- It took a long time to get advertising on search band is really taken off so that’s enabled a whole results page right. And then, when the engines lot of great web applications and websites and finally did get it right it turned out that a simple companies to really ramp-up their online capabili- text ad was the best. But that was within the con- ties and customers are able to get a very immer- text of a linear, text based presentation of results. sive, exciting experience because of that. I think Does that change significantly when our results you’re going to see a similar ramp-up with mobile suddenly include images and videos in the linear carriers, not only with the networks themselves as format may break up into more of a portal-based they upgrade and update, but also with the de- format? vices. I think there’s still a ways to go with the de- vices and they’re only getting better. The iPhone is Chris Sherman: I think it just creates more oppor- a great example. I was playing with that at the tunities for advertising. It's got to be really inter- Apple store this weekend. I just bumped into a guy esting to watch how that evolves because we here at the cafeteria who had one. I think the de- started with actually a richer form of advertising, vices themselves and being able to navigate arguably, with banner ads and people learned to through the web and being able to pull up informa- become blind to them. It was only once we got real tion in a super intuitive, quick and easy way is ab- simple basic text ads that that form of advertising solutely going to start to take off and I think there really took off. So I think what we're going to see will be a point, and this probably won’t happen this experimentation and a lot of creativity around 20 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com
  • 21. the different formats. you see, and I don’t know if this will be in three years, where you see small little banner ads or Marissa Mayer: I think that there will be different other things that are off to the side that start to types of advertising on the search results page. As replace the text links, just so they can continue to you know, my theory is always that the ad should carry some weight on the page. Because I would match the search results. So if you have text re- imagine if you get to the point where you ever sults, you have text ads, and if you have image really great search experience but the ads are hard results, you have image ads. So as the page be- to see, the advertisers aren’t going to be very comes richer, the ads also need to become richer, happy with you just so that they look alive and match the page. That said, trust is a fundamental premise of Danny Sullivan: I guess the concern might be if the search. Search is a learning activity. You think of natural results are getting better and better why Google and Ask and these other search engines as would someone want to click on the ads anyway? teachers. As an end user the only reason learning Maybe people will reassess the paid results and and teaching works, the only way it works, is when some people will come through and say that paid you trust your teacher. You know you’re getting search results are a form of search data base as the best information because it’s the best informa- well. So we’re going to call them classifieds or tion, not because they have an agenda to mislead we’re going to call them ads, we’re going to move you or to make more money or to push you some- them right into the linear display. You know where because of their own agenda. So while I do there’ll be issues, because at least in the US, you think the ads will look different, they will look dif- have the FCC guidelines that say that you should ferent in format, or they may look different in really keep them segregated. So if you don’t high- placement, I think our commitment to calling out light them or blend them in some way, you might very strongly where we have a monetary incentive run into some regulatory problems. But then and we may be biased will remain. Our one prom- again, maybe those rules might start to change as ise on our search results page, and that will stand, the search innovation starts to change, and go with is that we clearly mark the ads. It’s very important it from there. to us that the users know what the ads are because it’s the disclosure of that bias, that ultimately Michael Ferguson: It puts increased relevance builds the trust which is paramount to search them pressure on the advertising because, however that advertising is expressed, and it might not just be Justin Osmer: For us, it’s going to be about mak- text ads in the future as far as optimization or buy- ing sure that people understand that the majority ing, it puts relevance pressure on the advertising of the page, if you look at the page real estate, at because they are increasingly being presented in a least 75% of that will be the organic, and making more varied experience with competing routes for sure that’s clear to people. For the sponsored links, users to take. I think that is good for end users I think that those are going to evolve in time as and good for advertisers and I think that search well. It’s certainly been proven out of the market- marketers are going to become much more, to my place that there’s a lot of money to be made there mind, in demand and sophisticated quickly because and a lot of companies have become reliant on the this is going to drive the need to coordinate a cam- text linked ads. As the search page becomes more paign across how you might present something robust and, potentially, more populated with with video, how you might present something with graphics or a more rich experience, I think that the audio and images to fulfill the advertising opportu- ads will maybe need to raise up and match that in nities that are going to come with these more rich some respects. So that there may be a time where pages. Another thing that we are seeing is more 21 Enquiro Research web.enquiroresearch.com phone.250.861.5252 email.sales@enquiro.com