tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post116606627987172595..comments2024-03-24T10:38:16.997-07:00Comments on Geeking with Greg: AlwaysOn panel: What is the data telling us?Greg Lindenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09216403000599463072noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1166205257916658522006-12-15T09:54:00.000-08:002006-12-15T09:54:00.000-08:00Greg - thanks for sharing this information - these...Greg - thanks for sharing this information - these types of panels always provide some do insight into where people are thinking on an issue. I thing I would add (knowing you are on a path to personalized search ;-)...<BR/><BR/>People in general will take the path of least resistance - in all areas of their life - and using the internet is not different. Patterns (and habits) are developed over time and they are almost impossible to break (once entrenched).<BR/><BR/>Just because some "person" creates a way to do something that they believe is "so simple, everyone should be doing it this way" goes against basic human nature. <BR/><BR/>Great Post - thanks for sharing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1166168460019420192006-12-14T23:41:00.000-08:002006-12-14T23:41:00.000-08:00At this point, Bambi seemed to shift focus a bit a...<I>At this point, Bambi seemed to shift focus a bit and ask a bunch of questions about personalization and recommendations. Again, Bambi was not getting a lot of answers, but most of the answers she did get were fairly negative toward the idea of personalized search.</I><BR/><BR/>That seems kinda strange to me, because a few months later (Septembrish? Octobrish? I can't remember offhand) when Peter gave a talk at PARC, he was all over the idea of personalized search. He talked about the amazing things Google was doing toward search personalization. In fact, for years the storyline coming out of the Googleplex was that users not only do not want to do a lot of work, but that users <I>will not</I> do a lot of work. And personalization is the way to help them avoid doing more work (as opposed to the Ask.com "tools" approach, i.e. relevance feedback and query expansion). <BR/><BR/>Does this mean Google is actually starting to change its mind, and go in more of the "tools" direction? If so, does that mean they are finding that users really are willing to do a little bit more work, when given the proper tools in the proper contexts? I've always thought that users really are willing to do more work: witness the fact that a single search session involves the user typing in the same query, with slight variations, 3 or 4 times. That in itself is a lot of work right there! So if you can give the user intelligent tools to help guide them, then you might narrow that down to 2 or 3 iterations.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1166138553115300352006-12-14T15:22:00.000-08:002006-12-14T15:22:00.000-08:00Interesting summary. I am amused by Peter's commen...Interesting summary. I am amused by Peter's comment that Google cares only about the current search terms of a user not necessarily their history. I think one reason for that is that companies like Yahoo and Google cant afford to store the data which at Yahoo gets to be over 10 Terabytes a day or something similar. <BR/><BR/>If storing that data was possible, they would definitely do it. I dont buy the "only current" argument. On the other hand, startups in the personalization search space can afford to do this cos they dont have the scale that Google or Yahoo has.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1166131598352841852006-12-14T13:26:00.000-08:002006-12-14T13:26:00.000-08:00There is a lot of research and working going into ...There is a lot of research and working going into making search more context aware. For example:<BR/><BR/>* Where is the user located? (geographic location or even physical location: home, work, car, etc...)<BR/><BR/>* When is the query being executed? (what time of day, year, month, etc...). For example, are they more likely to be water vs. snow skiing?, etc... <BR/><BR/>* What is the user doing when the query is executed? <BR/><BR/>* Can you bias the query towards the documents the user has in their collection? (bookmarks, images, e-mail, word documents, video games, etc...)jeff.daltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12887721174386884522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1166076763968902792006-12-13T22:12:00.000-08:002006-12-13T22:12:00.000-08:00To me, this is the difference between "contextual"...To me, this is the difference between "contextual" and "behavioral". Context is now. Behavior is what you've shown over time. Just thinking in terms of advertising, we've found that context is much more valued by the user (higher click-thru rates, eCPM, etc.) and the advertiser. <BR/><BR/>Obviously the field of search has to prioritize context first, and behavior second. I suspect at Findory you're more focused on behavior-driven personalization.<BR/><BR/>I agree with your opinion about "behavior" being able to supplement "context".<BR/><BR/>Peter's comment "I don't want to know about you so much as I want to know about all the other people in the same situation and what they did then" particularly resonated with me. At Others Online, we're trying to *show* you those people in real time and let you connect with them. It goes beyond search though.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com