Lodging Interactive Blog

A Search Engine That Relies on Humans

A Search Engine That Relies on Humans
By JOSHUA BRUSTEIN
Published: February 4, 2010
A report this week laying out a strategy for social search has been getting a good deal of attention in tech circles. The paper, "Anatomy of a Large Scale Social Search Engine," was written by Damon Horowitz and Sepandar Kamvar of Aardvark, one of several companies working on creating social search engines. As of October 2009, Aardvark had about 90,000 users.

Social search aims to connect people with questions to people who can answer those questions. By contrast, regular Web searches take questions, break them into keywords, and then find Web sites that have the most relevance to these keywords. The idea has been floating around tech circles for years. Yahoo, among others, has tried to develop social search as a way to challenge Google.
The idea has gained momentum with the increased use of Twitter and Facebook, where people rely on their networks for information, blasting queries to their social networks and, if their networks are good enough, getting useful, personalized responses. Aardvark and competitors like Mahalo are trying to create better tools for people with questions to connect to people with answers. There are some people who think social search has the potential to go beyond Google and fundamentally change the way people use the Internet.

Indeed, the authors draw a parallel between their report and another that the founders of Google published in 1998, "Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine," which hinted at its own paradigm shift. The paper described a prototype of the Google search engine, which is based on the theory of reading hyperlinks and other data to determine how relevant Web sites were to a user's search.

Aardvark uses various factors to identify who it thinks are the best people to answer a question, then poses the question to them. Among the things it tries to determine are the expertise a potential answerer has about a subject, how closely connected the two people are, and how quickly the answerer is available.
From a technical standpoint, Aardvark's task is easier than Google's. As the tech-news blog TechCrunch put it, "On Google, when you type in a query, the engine has to pair you up with exact websites that hold the answer to your query. On Aardvark, it only has to pair you with a person who knows about the topic -- it doesn't have to worry about actually finding the answer, and can be more flexible with how the query is worded."
But there are also some significant shortcomings to Aardvark's approach. Getting answers through social search requires someone else to do something, so it cannot produce the instant gratification that comes from typing something into a Web search box and watching a page of results appear. For Aardvark to be successful, it needs to enlist the participation of competent answerers. (Aardvark says that more than half of the questions posed received an answer within 10 minutes.)

There is also the question of whether or not to trust the answer one gets through a social search. How do you know if the person who answered your question is qualified to answer?

Social search will not replace conventional search, say its proponents. Instead, it will become another tool for Web users, like other specialized search tools such as Wolfram Alpha. Aardvark said in its blog post:

We demonstrate that there is a large class of subjective questions -- especially longer, contextualized requests for recommendations or advice -- which are better served by social search than by web search. And our key finding is that whereas in the Library paradigm, users trust information depending upon the authority of its author, in the Village paradigm, trust comes from our sense of intimacy and connection with the person we are getting an answer from.
Mac Slocum wrote on O'Reilly Radar that another factor -- the increased use of mobile computing -- may be the final piece of the puzzle for social searches. "Mobile search has to be concise and targeted. Results that emanate from a trusted network of friends and associates certainly fit that bill," he said. "Toss in more geolocation features and improved speech recognition, and the utility of mobile-based social search could get really interesting."

Aardvark's report gives an idea of what niche it sees social search filling. For one, mobile Aardvark users are more active than desktop users. Questions on social search also tended to be more complex and more subjective than the average Web search question. As for the issue of trust, the closer a responder was to the questioner's social network, the more likely the questioner was to be satisfied with the answer.

According to Aardvark's report, the most common questions being asked are restaurants and bar recommendations, product reviews and help, local services and travel. And, as with all new buzzy technologies, a sizable chunk of the questions people are asking are about Aardvark itself.

Hotel Social Media Perspective

PARSIPPANY, NJ, February 2, 2010 - Social Media engagement techniques and benefits are all about creating interest and engaging with people online that share a common interest with what you talk about on your social media pages. As a hotelier, you need to talk about more than just your hotel. It’s about your location, events, guest reviews and questions and so much more. An occasional special promotion or a holiday promotion is good, talk it up, but consider a special offer just for your followers. Try to get feedback so you know what actions you can generate to get the results you want.

The social media world is commercializing overnight. The number of hotels on Facebook and Twitter is growing every day. The challenge facing all hotels is how to engage consumers so they become guests or share their praise for your hotel with their network followers and fans. It’s really about knowing all your hotel’s market segments and how to reach out to each segment with a provocative message, survey, specials exclusive to your followers and follower contests.

It is important for every one of the hotel’s management and staff to know about your social websites and to follow what your followers contribute. You need to make your social media pages are public and invite guests, business associates and suppliers to follow you. A neglected social media page will do more damage than good, so keeping it current and fresh is essential. An active social media presence will also help the hotel's search rankings and exposure.

Here again, just like search marketing over the years, the question is to outsource or try to do it in-house. Most hotels have learned their staff is not up to the task of creating and managing effective search and social marketing. These are important marketing elements today and they will be even more important in the days and months ahead. Search marketing will deliver short-term results while social marketing is an investment in long-term results, but when done right returns will materialize from an effective viral network. 
Social media is not a fade and it will not go away. The social networks will find ways to generate income and grow their services. Going forward, we can expect to see more social networks and segmentation of the current social networks into sub-networks, along with more blogging relationships. This one-on-one supplier to buyer relationship will put more pressure on the suppliers to deliver. We all know that you can’t satisfy everyone all the time, but if we don’t know how to engage consumers online, we are unable to join the conversation and add two new customers for the one we’ve lost.

For the hospitality industry, it is all about providing the best service possible because if you don’t, over time it will affect your business. Social media is a tremendous opportunity for independent hotels to challenge the cookie cutter standards of the brands and it is an opportunity for the brands to reach their loyal followers with more cookies. 
As the Internet has evolved over the past 15 years and the search engines took control of website traffic over the past ten years, those businesses that get onboard with social media early are the ones that will build their relationships and viral networks that will pay off. With social media, it’s about what all-good service businesses do best; know who your customers are, what they want and deliver.

For information on how Lodging Interactive’s CoMMingle Social Media Marketing Service can help your hotel, please visit www.CoMMIngle.me or call 877-291-4411.

Google Tool Shows Where the Eyeballs Go on Your Site | WebProNews

Google has launched a new Google Labs experiment called Browser Size, which is a tool aimed at helping webmasters see how others view their site. Google's official description of the tool says:Ever wondered what parts of your site can't be seen without scrolling? Browser Size shows you what portion of users can see a give spot on the screen. This is not screen resolution but the area available to the browser - as gathered from www.google.com users. Here is what it looks like: "In a newspaper, the most important story is featured on the front page," says Google Senior Software Engineer, Bruno Bowden. "If it's a really important piece, then it's placed 'above the fold,' which means you can find it on the top half of the first page — the bottom half is folded behind and isn't readily seen when you first look at the newspaper." "The same concept applies to browsers as well," he adds. "There's no clear line for "above the fold" on a browser — there are many different sizes of monitors, browsers are not always full screen and other things like toolbars can take up space. Consider a 'Donate' button on a non-profit site. If it's far down the page, you may not see it when you first view the page. You can of course scroll downwards, but many people don't scroll and will miss it entirely." To use the tool, simply enter your URL and it will insert your page into the graph showing the percentage of people who are likely to see each area. Don't be surprised if a lot of websites suddenly start shifting to the left. The tool was one of Google's "20% time" projects. A post on the Google Code blog has some interesting details about how the project came about and grew to what it is. Related Articles:

via www.webpronews.com

Study: Social Media Usage In The Inc. 500 | Small Business Trends

Now that the year’s coming to a close, it’s time to look back and identify the tools, trends and social media sites that hit it big with businesses over the past year. With that in mind, the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted an in-depth study to analyze the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations (PDF). The study compared 3 years of social media adoption (2006-2009) by the fastest-growing private companies in the US, as compiled by Inc. Magazine. I thought the results were worth looking at here.

via smallbiztrends.com

Corporate Travel Stabelizing??

Reflecting the depths reached by the corporate travel industry in 2009, American Express' global corporate travel sales shrunk 30 percent year over year to $14.6 billion. That slide, however, seems to have stabilized with Q4 performance reporting a more moderate 5 percent decrease compared with last year.

Improve your Google Local listing

With over 80% of people using search engines to find local information, it is impossible to imagine a brick and mortar business that couldn’t benefit immensely from local search. On the other hand, having no local search presence could potentially end a local business.

via smallbiztrends.com

Social Media Expected to be Bigger Than Search

Stats published by Nielsen show that social media usage has increased by 82% in the last year, an astronomical rise. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and social interaction are becoming the focus of our online interactions, even more than search.

We’re social creatures, so it was only a matter of time until we figured out how to make the web an efficient medium for communication, sharing, and forging friendships. Now that we’re finally implementing the social layer though, it’s tough to find a scenario where the rise of social media doesn’t continue.

In ten years, when you access the web, most of the time you spend will be to connect with your friends. Almost all of that will be on social networks and through social media. It will be the #1 reason why we ever pull out our phones, tablets, or computers.

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Google Founders to Sell Their Shares

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two billionaire co-founders of Google, will each sell 5 million of their Google shares over the next five years, according to an SEC filing.

Since Page and Brin are significant shareholders and executives for the technology giant, they are required to report their transaction plans for their piece of the company they founded over a decade ago.

Currently the two men own approximately 57.7 million shares of Google – about 18% of Google’s market value and 59% of the voting power. After the five year plan is complete, they will own around 47.7 million shares, dropping their interest in Google to around 15% of its capital stock and 48% of its voting power. This equates to a transaction of $2.25 billion, based on the current value of a share of Google, $550.01.

Google Updates Transliteration Tool

Trying to type a non-Roman language such as Hindi or Russian on a Roman keyboard is not easy. That's because such languages use characters not found on a traditional keyboard. However, those languages can be spelled phonetically and then transliterated into the formal characters.

via blog.searchenginewatch.com