Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

André Hedetoft — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 03:19:17 -0000

Personally I'm completely sold on the nisch tactic.
Find that one thing that send goosebumps down your arms and legs and rule that nisch.

I use Google for usual searches.
I use Technorati for blog and tags searches.
I use Wikipedia for subject searches.

I love what all of them bring to me and I would not settle with one service that did all three, but did them poorly.

André Hedetoft
Movie-geek
Blogging about geek porn over at
http://www.andrehedetoft.co...

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

marshal sandler — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:31:11 -0000

At 70 years old, based on time in grade, I have found out that the more the merrier ! All of these tech info tools Google,Technorati ,Raw Sugar,Wikopedia, will eventually develop individual styles ! Their individuality will benefit all bloggers, educators,geeks ! Many people critisize Microsoft,
but Gates in time seems to do very well as does Apple ! Remember business exists for profit it has no heart , we might be smart to support all technology, only the best will survive!
remember when Cadillac was the standard of the world? Google I think will be fine, but Technorati seems to also have a very good plan ! Plan your work , work your plan!

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

dmad — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:24:56 -0000

actually, the company that owns CBS also owns MTV... ;-). But your point is taken...

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

solomonrex — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 10:20:50 -0000

Sorry, Scoble, Google is vulnerable there only because a market doesn't exist. Of the three of you who have heard of Technocrati, only one of you are using it.

You have to think of this like a broadcast channel. MTV is never going to replace CBS. Google is CBS. MTV shouldn't even WANT to replace CBS, but they went ahead with the reality TV craze anyway, and now every makes fun of how they never have music. Which doesn't really prove anything, since they still make money and they are both owned by Viacom. Which is only to say, you should stop this Technocrati fetish, international weakness is much huger for Google.

btw, glad you're talking business again, but I understand also, my condolences.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Kenny Page — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 08:22:27 -0000

As a side note to this discussion, I believe that a relevant conversation could be had about why the major players in search have not looked at *integrating* blog style searching with traditional search methods.

Think out the box for a minute..

..hows about a Technorati "Tags" style search mechanism for normal pages based on the already existing keywords META tag?

..or taking it a stage further, a Flickr "Clusters" style search using the same principle?

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Neal Saferstein — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 02:04:55 -0000

there are things about Technorati that I like but other things that absolutely drive me batty.

BIGGEST GRIPE: My site pings technorati per thier documentation and three minutes later their spider appears as if on cue (evidenced in my logs). However, not once has technorati EVER published any of the data in the tags that I have on my pages…real or test data…not once. I’ve even tried really strange tags that no one else has ever used. Apparently, from easily searched for postings, I’m not the only one complaining about this.

Fix that, technorati dudes, and you’ll feel more love.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

dorai — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 01:49:43 -0000

Hi Robert,

Wordpress uses google's blog search for finding backlinks to your blog. The same search in Technorati does better. So I understand what you mean.

Have you noticed bloglines, ask.com integration for blog search. I accidentally stumbled upon it the other day.

Blogs carry higher semantics than web pages since they have more metadata. Searches that take advantage of this can do a better job too. Bloggers also help search engines by tagging/categorizing their blogs. This is additional data the search engines can use.

Keep up the good work. Nice to see you back, blogging again.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

met — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 01:23:58 -0000

Or how Google is eating into MS office ? ;)

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

dmad — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 22:45:36 -0000

And once you said that to Gates he would look at you then look at Ray Ozzie and say: "Please tell me this guy doesn't work for us"

I don't know too many people outside of self important blogosphere that care too much about blog search. What average Joe fires up a search engine and says "I really need to find a blog on the best Mexican restaurant in Chicago"?

Sure blog search is important to a small audience. Not sure how much money there is to be made there.

Moreover, I think MS should think about getting search right first. And while they may think they have the technology right, they don't have the mindshare. MSN or Live Search is not yet a verb.

Are you suggesting MS start investing in blog search more? Again, not sure what the return on the is. OOOPS! I forgot! This isn't a numbers game. My mistake.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Randy Charles Morin — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 22:20:24 -0000

Cool! Too many links :-(

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Robert Scoble — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:37:50 -0000

Randy, sorry, WordPress's spam filter caught it and held it for me to approve. Which I just did.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Alex S — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:26:12 -0000

I don't know if I buy the premise of the post. I think that google is hardwiring in lots of small searches -- things like package tracking and movie times, for example.

Blogs are comparatively harder to search, because it's so hard to counter spam and fraud in blogs. It's comparatively easy to do a UPS tracking number (so long as UPS is willing to cooperate).

If I were at a search engine company, I'd do something LISPy that would let anyone upload macros that would let them define custom searches like movie times, using a custom syntax. Maybe tie it into something like a database service, so people could create sets of sits to search, or keep track of parameters, etc. A way to know what sites should be searched for show times, and what my username's zip code is.

The point is, I'd try to get out of the way and let people make it work without having someone in the company sign off on it. And the stuff that was really good and useful would become part of a standard library -- the company could embrace the best stuff.

What you'd really want, I think, would be industries creating standard services that would drive traffic to the site. If a microsoft search engine would search for auto parts really efficiently, and I was in a business that used auto parts, I'd use microsoft's engine for other stuff too.

But basically, I think you'd make this happen by using the search engine almost like a platform or OS itself -- make it extensible, and provide the ability to create data structures and db tables in it.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Randy Charles Morin — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:01:53 -0000

Robert, where did my comment go?

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

/pd — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:36:36 -0000

Scobles, T'rati is way ahead of the game in terms of Blog searching..

1) Tags searching
2) bold step into micro formats
3) Much better indexing-as of recently !1

..'nuff said

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Toner Boner — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:04:07 -0000

there are things about Technorati that I like but other things that absolutely drive me batty.

BIGGEST GRIPE: My site pings technorati per thier documentation and three minutes later their spider appears as if on cue (evidenced in my logs). However, not once has technorati EVER published any of the data in the tags that I have on my pages...real or test data...not once. I've even tried really strange tags that no one else has ever used. Apparently, from easily searched for postings, I'm not the only one complaining about this.

Fix that, technorati dudes, and you'll feel more love.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Randy Charles Morin — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:54:58 -0000

Weird Robert, I find Technorati to be broken.

Let's just search for links to your blog.
http://www.technorati.com/s...
Here's what I get...

-side blogroll (I assume it's been there for months, but it's the freshess link according to Technorati)
http://allpointsnorth.co.uk/

-my brain hurts on this one
http://www.technorati.com/s...

Really! It's a self-referential SERP result. Anyhow, I'm sure it gets better from there, but I won't bother continuing.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Ben Finklea — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:18:56 -0000

The reason that Google has been successful is that advertising is extraordinarily profitable at the microscopic level. A really smart guy named Bill Gross figured out that small businesses owners like me would pay to have people come to my website. He started Overture, Google took his idea and made it enormously scalable and profitable.

We can argue that Google is a search company...or they're an ad company...or an eyeball aggregator...or whatever. What you can't say is that Google doesn't go after the small things. I would say, in fact, that they do focus on the small things and that they do them really, really well.

I think Scoble's point is that you never know when some little insignificant thing is important enough to destroy a company. Right now, blog search may be eating around the edges of the Google empire. It might be very significant. I don't personally agree but it's worth considering, certainly.

Remember in the early 90s when Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was now an Internet company? He figured out that the Internet was important enought that they'd better do something about it. Fortunately, they had the vast resources necessary to turn the company on a dime and invest in the in the software that would put them in a dominant position for this newfangled medium. Microsoft thrives because they see everything as a threat/opportunity.

Microsoft and Google will both continue to be super successful because they enable me to make more money. Small businesses have more aggregate money than big businesses do. Microsoft has a desktop operating system and suite of software that is really great. It lets me email people, write contracts, surf, balance my checkbook, listen to music, build and serve websites etc. etc. Google has a search engine that is really great. It lets me find helpful websites, research products I want to buy, locate potential business partners, attract customers to my web store, etc. etc.

The question is not which will dominate the other but rather which will make the customer happy. I don't care who wins. Just make me happy and I'll give you my money.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Paul Downey — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:15:45 -0000

Never mind the blogs, it's their lead in Tags and Microformats that makes Technorati one to watch ..

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Rod — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:30:17 -0000

Hey Robert,

Great post. What do you think about Sphere? They combine a semantic engine with live blog search.

I certainly go to Technorati and Sphere more than I go to Google these days.

- Rod

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Christopher Coulter — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:29:55 -0000

how profoundly stupid and pathetic your analogy

Well, in his defense, he's merely parroting the Redmond Bloogerish Reality Distortion Field line of the moment...think of a sponge (there's my analogy). ;)

And Technorati can't scale and drives me batty and is hopelessly circular, and produces wild varianced results. Now Google is all blog-mucked to heck, it's not even a search engine, it's an advertising engine, really. As for MSN? Do be serious. But Ask.com starting to kick in more.

Real search, real research still costs...aka Lexis/Nexis, Westlaw and ilk. If information wants to be free, it will have to dress up a whole lot better.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Ryan — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:12:10 -0000

See, here's where Microsoft and everybody make the mistake. Google is NOT a search company, they're an advertising company.

The reason they don't go after small things is because advertising isn't as profitable at the small level..

However, this is also where the opportunity lies not for Microsoft or other competitors (as soon as you at MS figure out what you're trying to compete with, youll be on the right track).

The small stuff, when added up, makes up a much larger sum of the internet.. It's like the never ending tail of a logarithmic equation... Sure it tails off to a number.. but that tail goes forever.

The problem is, nobody can capture ALL that the tail encompases, it's breadth is just too large. That's why there will always be sites like technocrati.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Goebbels — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:30:45 -0000

"Goebbels: no, if a company doesn’t react to the changing needs of customers they’ll lose it.

Or, do you think the world still needs Apple II software?"

How can you be so profoundly thick and dim to presume that saying 1. Google does not exclusively focus on Microsoft and 2. Google does not need to be a leader in every marketplace equates to Google does not need to react to anything?

I would hope that you know how profoundly stupid and pathetic your analogy is... Did you receive a brain injury today or something?

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

rhm — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:30:14 -0000

Technorati might aspire to be the "google of blogs", but it has a long, long way to go before it reaches google levels of performance and reliability. You might use it all the time Robert, but I haven't got the patience. To me Technorati is useless for gathering information. I only have an account there in the hope that my blogs will be found be others who have more time on their hands than me.

Seriously, I find it completely baffling that neither Microsoft or Google have eaten Technorati's lunch yet. They both must be capable of building something with the same features but actually works all the time. I think it might be a measure of how much more important you think blogging is than everyone else does, that Google's blog search has been in beta forever and still sucks.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Robert Scoble — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:25:08 -0000

Brian: hmm, I haven't hit one of those in quite a while. I'm using Technorati quite a bit for RSS searches, though. As to success, mostly anecdotal at this point. But, that was how Google's success started out too.

Re: Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

Robert Scoble — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:24:23 -0000

Brian: hmm, I haven't hit one of those in quite a while. I'm mostly using Technorati for RSS searches, though.