SES Conference Notes

Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com

Speakers:
Grant Ryan, Chief Scientist, Eurekster
Tim Mayer, Senior Director Global Web Search, Yahoo
Nils Pohlmann, Program Manager, Windows Live Search

What is Social Search? The simple definition is – Internet wayfinding tool based on human behavior.

Search Engines are measuring human behavior such as click paths, popular urls, duration, etc. to modify their algorithms. Most social search players are using human volunteers for feedback.

Most Social Sites allow contributors to develop reputation and this herein lays the great value to the search engines – TRUST. According to Tim Mayer, Yahoo sees community & tagging as the next big breakthrough in search technology.

Types of Social Search Sites:

• Del.icio.us
• MySpace
• Furl
• Shadows
• Windows Live Spaces

Collaborative Directories:

• ODP – DMOZ
• Prefound
• Zimbia
• Netscape

Verticals:

• Eurekster
• Rollyo

Collaborative Harvesters:

• Digg
• Netscape
• Reddit

Social Q&A:

• Google Answers
• Yahoo! Answers (12.3 million users in 7 months, wow)
• Answerbag

A few issues concerning tagging:

1. There is an ambiguity of language. (does orange mean the color or the fruit?)
2. Lack of controlled vocabulary
3. Human laziness
4. Idiots! (algorithms can’t detect IQ)
5. Spammers

There will be more on Social Search later…