I am here at SES with Marshall and I am pinch hitting for Marshall for this session. Maybe it is just that I am a Scoble and Cutts groupie…
Panel Moderator: Danny Sullivan - Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com
Robert Scoble – Technical Evangelist, Scobleizer
David Vise – Author, The Google Story
Zia Daniell Wigder, VP and Research Director, JupiterResearch
Jeremy Zawodny, Technical Yahoo!
Matt Cutts – Google Software Engineer
Note - Questions were taken from the audience for the panelists.
Q. What will be the impact on search when MS releases Vista with search integrated?
Robert – it is already added in – it will make search better.
David – Many people confuse me with Bill Gates.
I will answer as Bill Gates – “We are going to do everything in our power to destroy Google. That means everything – consistent with our ongoing battle with DOJ, European Union. We truly are out to destroy Google. Immediately following this session, we will be destroying Matt Cutts in the lobby. We are selling tickets.”
Matt: I noticed in one rev of IE7 – there was a drop down box that did not include a place to add Google. It must have been just an oversight, right?
Danny – Search has been built in to IE for years, but Yahoo and Google has still succeeded. People had to explicit go out and go over the defaults and use another search partner. At the moment, what every your default is in IE, that will carry through in IE7.
Q. What are your future prediction on vertical search engines and the impact on the major search engines in the next few years?
Robert – Technorati rules
(from the audience) – Thanks Robert!
David – I think about it is like Cable TV and Network TV – There will be tremendous growth in both.
Jeremy – I think of vertical search like specialized tools – I use them occasionally. I don’t think vertical search engines will take away share away from the big SE.
Danielle – We have seen the numbers of people increasing in vertical search engines
Matt – It is much easier to start a new company these days. I think it is fantastic that there are lots of companies out there trying to find a niche. I do think it is easier for the big guys to spin out a vertical search engine.
Robert – I started out with Technorati and they come out on top in my tests. A small company can take on the big boys and be quite profitable.
Q. I have been seeing Google getting into radio, print ads, and pay per call. Why?
Matt: We think about advertising as an algorithmic search, can we provide very relevant advertising that matches content. Being able to measure advertising is critical, but harder in some medias.
David – Google has Madison Avenue very, very worried. Google is serving ads in newspapers, bought Dmark, they are allowing very small businesses to run radio ads, utilizing Google’s technology, with a credit card and do it very easily. What Google is doing, is going to channel more money into traditional media.
Q. I have started using Del.icio.us as a search engine? Do you think that is popular? Will Yahoo use this?
Jeremy: It is interesting how to look at usage. With the traditional search results, the only people who get a vote online are people who know how to use the tools to get noticed by the search engines. Services like delicious lower the barrier to allow people to vote on what is popular. I also like digg, both can drive tremendous amount of traffic. There is a lot we can do to bridge the gap between traditional organic results with the set of results that are more relevant. Tags may not be the way it happens. Is delicious ready for mainstream? No, but it is still incredibly useful. The problem with tags, every time you add a new tag, it makes more work for people – adds more complexity for the decision making.
Robert – I like how Google does news at the top of sites. I also use memorandum. But that only works if you have a large community link to each other.
Matt – The first time I use Delicious and Flickr and the first time, they didn’t work very well. The next Google toolbar allows you to use tagging. One concern is how much those tags get spammed.
Q. Where is this industry involving 6 months, 1 year down the road?
Matt: I think buzz – having a blog that is authentic – align yourself with your customers interest is the best thing you can do.
Danielle – Social search will develop
David – Answering as Bill Gates, “Microsoft will dominate and destroy Google. I have a hat that says Google on it. After we destroy Google, this will be all that is left of Google. My advice is to advertise heavily on MSN.”
Jeremy – I also think that social search and local search and mapping will be very important. Being able to have a GPS in my car, it completely changes how I drive. I want that same thing on my cell. We launched Yahoo Answers – we think this an untapped variation of social search.
David – answering as myself – the Teoma underpinnings of Ask are very good. Barry Dillar may have told you that they were getting rid of the butler, but they will spend a lot of money on advertising to brand it as ASK, but at one point, Jeeves will come back.
Jeremy – Matt helped uncover that the Butler is Big Brother.
Danny – Vertical search will be the big future. Instead of harassing Matt Cutts, you should be figuring out how to get listed on Google Local, maps, blogs, whatever vertical that matters to you. Getting listed in top ten will lose importance. Google Maps is maybe a year old. It has been a fundamental change.
Robert – I have google search on my wireless – these are getting good enough to completely change my usage. Later today, Microsoft will release on Channel 9 360 degree pictures of Seattle and San Francisco.
Q. What about spam?
Robert – my email is in public space and I get very little spam – I don’t like getting email, I like RSS feed better. Memoradum has 0 spam (or very little).
Matt – We have been working on web spam in international spam fighting. I am really proud how my team has tackled spam. The next trend is to improve search relevancy so you don’t find off topics in your serps. We are all about using new techniques and algorithms.
Q. In the future, will Google be able to determine relevancy of incoming links?
Matt: We already do that. Scoring links is very technical and sophisticated. All the big search engines do this.
Robert – there is some philosophy about why they built their algorithm to provide the search results the way they do. I always find it interesting to try to understand that philosophy.
Jeremy – Having the input of my friends to influence my search results reminds me of the experience of using TIVO, once you use it, people don’t want to go back.
Danny – Yahoo has done a good job to add humans into the mix. Yahoo has the personalize search tools to modify search. We may see the day where Oprah shares her search preferences and influence how others find search results.
Personalized Google shows my search history, my search preferences, etc. That data is the third generational leap that will impact search.
Q. What about video search?
Matt: I agree, I was a skeptic about video. I think it is getting better. If you told me a year ago that I would buy videos online, I would have told you that you were crazy. But I found that we got into the “Lost” TV series and we missed 6 episodes this year and we bought them and downloaded them to our iPod. I would have never believed that I would have done that before.
Jeremy: When video that is on the computer crosses the gap to that device in the living room, then it will have arrived.
David: I think the big future is the downloads of motion pictures, TV shows, Pay Per view, etc. Everyone is working behind the scenes to figure out the whole digital rights management.
Q. Danny, do you ever see the European or Asian markets becoming competitive in Search, and not dominated by American firms?
Danny: Yes European and Asian governments are looking at this and trying to determine what they want to happen.
David: Look at South Korea. Lots of Korean search engines, no dominant foreign Search engine.
Jeremy: Local search engines have a huge advantage at understanding the localization issues.
Daniell – I think there are many markets up for grabs. For example, the Middle East.
Matt: We think about top search engines in each market every day and how to learn from them and what they do best.
Other versions of this session can be found here:
SEORoundTable - good review!
*Update: You can find Scoble’s review here and Matt Cutts review here.
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