Real Estate Relativity » search engines

Future of search and search engines

Eric Bryn — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:29:59 +0000

Here’s an article that details some interesting issues relative to search, recapping a Xconomy Forum on the Future of Search and Information Discovery panel recently held in Seattle. On the dais were Microsoft, Google, and a couple of University of Washington professors. Here’s some salient take-aways:

It’s still unresolved whether vertical search will significantly impact general search
The nexus between real-time search, consumer intent, and semantic search is where the search gold resides
Hurricane Katrina taught Google a lesson about relevance and real time results
Opportunities to compete with Google and Bing exist, but only on the edge or fringe such as applications that bypass search engines, employ automated content discovery mechanisms, use semantic search, or perfect mobile geo-search

Interesting quotes:

Google is like smoking cigarettes, it’s a habit that’s going to be difficult to give up. So what can you do? You have to think about the problem space. Google’s approach is to get people in and out of search engine quickly with their result. Not the right way to think about it. Right way to think about it is to think about minimizing time of completing a task, not minimize the amount of time to match a query with a url.

[O]rganize the information in a way that synthesizes the task that you want to accomplish.

Mobile is huge. Apple is the big fish at the moment. Android coming on strong. Won’t hold my breath on Microsoft.

Two things which potentially threaten us. [1] As we become bigger and older, it could become more difficult for Google to innovate…[2] Also worry about diminishment of sense of entrepreneurship.

List of social Web resources 09-19-2009

Eric Bryn — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:29:06 +0000

Social media monitoring
Here’s a great list of conversation monitoring tools. The article points out some very interesting and straight-forward tips; I especially like the tip on this social media monitoring wiki.

Search use up, email use down
The Online Publishers Association released a study showing that consumers are spending more and more time on search and content centered sites while dropping their use of email and instant messaging.

Social network use by mobile device
This study by AdMod shows that social networking is the most used application of iPhone and smartphones users and that Facebook is the number one accessed social networking site.

Foreclosure Searches on the Rise

Eric Bryn — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:26:00 +0000

Hitwise and Google show that foreclosure searches are creeping up on “traditional” searches regarding properties for sale. UPDATE: RealtyTrac reports a 6% rise in foreclosures in February 2009 over January 2009, with a 30% increase over February 2008. On March 12, 2009, Hitwise reported that foreclosure searches are on the rise.

Hitwise: Forclosure Searches on the Rise

For fun I ran the top five Hitwise searches in Google Trends to see the differences between the search reporting engines. Google had slightly different data.

free foreclosure listings, foreclosure listings, foreclosure homes, foreclosure, foreclosure.com

Next I compared the search term “foreclosures” against search terms “homes for sale” and “real estate for sale” over a 12 month period. Here’s what I found:

foreclosures, homes for sale, real estate for sale, US, Last 12 months
Then I focused on Nevada for the same search phrases: forclosures, homes for sale, real estate for sale, NV, Last 12 months
Finally, I narrowed the searches down to Las Vegas: foreclosures, homes for sale, real estate for sale, LAS VEGAS, NV, Last 12 months