Search Engine Executive Roundtable, Part 1 Statements of main focus each engine by CEOs
Search Engine Executive Roundtable, Part 1:"Yahoo's Weiner said that search provides not just a means to an end but an end in itself. The Yahoo network has considerable depth, and the company is embedding search everywhere, trying to personalize the experience for each user.
In contrast to Campbell, Weiner stressed the importance to Yahoo of controlling its own technology. 'In addition to our user base, we own our own proprietary search technology. This lets us control features, and decide where to invest,' he said...
Weiner said that Yahoo looks at three factors to determine whether to pursue a particular strategy. First, is there consumer demand? Second, can Yahoo differentiate its offering from what currently exists to create more quality? And finally, Yahoo wants a vertical create value, either directly through monetization or indirectly by getting people involved with the experience and wanting more.
Yahoo plans to continue its push in vertical areas. Weiner highlighted travel and music as high demand categories "
AOL "AOL's Campbell. "We don't put efforts into core web search, but partner instead," referring to AOL's partnership with Google to provide both paid and organic search results...Our strategy is to deliver the best content experience," he said. "I think AOL's in a different spot."
Ask Jeeves's Gardi reiterated the importance of delivering a high quality user experience. "It's not about one size fits all," he said. But rather than emphasizing personalization, he said that quality of search results was one of the most important factors to Ask Jeeves.
"Relevance ties all of this together. Relevance is our obsession. We want to make it simple, want to make it fast, want to make it relevant...
Ask Jeeves' Gardi said that local search was a top priority, noting that ten percent of all searches have explicitly local intent. He said that the definition of "local" is also fuzzy. It could mean nearby business or services, or information about people, weather or maps. As far as local search services go, "These things have already existed, but crawling the web doesn't satisfy our need to get the information we're looking for," he said.
To solve this problem, Jeeves' is adding structured data to the content it has found on the web. This will include things like reviews, opinions, and what Gardi calls "eight years of accumulated experience about local search.""
MSN's Payne said the current state of search is very primitive compared to where it will be in ten years. "I think the end user is going to win dramatically. There's so much potential. It's day one in search. It truly is going to change the way that people connect with information."
MSN is pursuing what Payne called "implicit personalization." He hinted that the personalization technology used in its recently launched NewsBot service will migrate over into the mainstream web search service the company plans to launch later this year...
MSN is taking a similar tack to Ask Jeeves, integrating structured information into web search. "It will be our job to integrate that information into web search and then direct people to the good verticals.""
posted by Jen @ 3:35 PM
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