The Future of Your Searchable Brand – With or Without Google?

  • 0 min read

The DLD conference was yesterday and it was held in Munich. The highlight of the event (Thanks TechCrunch) was a session called “Humans Disrupting Algorithms,” in which David Kirkpatrick of Fortune spoke with Jimmy Wales and Jason Calacanis. Jimmy has developed a beta of Wikia Search, whereas Jason Calacanis has been running Mahalo for a few months now. Jason said “60% of people are not happy with search results, up from 50% last year.” Both of these search engines are operated by humans. The 60 employees who run Mahalo are paid, whereas the people running Wikia are not. The idea with the creation of both is to eliminate the “pollution” that Google has because of people who develop thousands of websites for SEO advantages.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3TKktZZbI]

Google’s VP of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, commented on human v. algorithmic search results from the audience.

“The problem isn’t with the searching process, it’s with the result. You can’t do the fat If you read Chris Anderson, the real value is in the long tail. So if I did a startup I would do something else. I would do a Facebook.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gL4cg-vIQY]

My opinion

I don’t see Google losing market share, but it do see a percentage of the people who traditionally use Google switching to these other services when they are in search of more “hard results.” You can’t search for your name in Mahalo unless you’re a celebrity or someone recommends a link to your site. Whatever happens, your going to start having to perform maintenance on these other sites just in case.

Do you think that search engines should be human operated or by Google’s PageRank algorithm?

Picture of Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press) and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (Kaplan Publishing), which combined have been translated into 15 languages.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Shiny Media’s $4.5M bet and the venture capital paradox reshaping blog networks

Shiny Media’s $4.5M bet and the venture capital paradox reshaping blog networks

The Blog Herald
The loneliest men in relationships aren’t the ones who are single—they’re the married men sitting three feet away from their wives wondering why intimacy feels like a skill they never learned

The loneliest men in relationships aren’t the ones who are single—they’re the married men sitting three feet away from their wives wondering why intimacy feels like a skill they never learned

The Vessel
9 hobbies that retired men say saved them — not from boredom, but from themselves

9 hobbies that retired men say saved them — not from boredom, but from themselves

Global English Editing
I’m 37 and I realized last month that I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to be the version of myself that makes other people comfortable — and I genuinely can’t remember what I actually like versus what I learned to like to fit in

I’m 37 and I realized last month that I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to be the version of myself that makes other people comfortable — and I genuinely can’t remember what I actually like versus what I learned to like to fit in

Global English Editing
Retirement doesn’t create an identity crisis — it reveals the one that was always there, waiting patiently behind forty years of being too busy to notice it

Retirement doesn’t create an identity crisis — it reveals the one that was always there, waiting patiently behind forty years of being too busy to notice it

Global English Editing
People who look significantly younger than their age after 70 almost always have these 9 characteristics — and the most powerful one is something most people assume you’re born with but psychologists say is actually learned

People who look significantly younger than their age after 70 almost always have these 9 characteristics — and the most powerful one is something most people assume you’re born with but psychologists say is actually learned

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore