Danny Sullivan
Web Search: A Look Ahead
It’s no longer Google Google Google
Consolidation of Search Engines means a strong “search voice” – good for searchers
What will help an engine win the search wars?
Sullivan says it will be personalization and “invisible tabs” may be the way to win.
For example, entering “pictures of cats” in the search box yields pictures of cats in Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. Google offers a small link: “Looking for pictures? Try Images.” Sullivan likened this to the search engine acting as a librarian by interacting with the searcher.
Search shortcuts also create sticky situations. Some folks get in a habit and always go to a certain site for a certain thing: “I always check the weather in Yahoo”
Personalization – like Eurekster – may work as well and may be pointing toward the future of personalized web search. Search memory on sites like A9 or Yahoo keeps track of the searches you’ve done.
Take a look at http://labs.google.com/personalized and http://www.snap.com/index.php
User Interface “Little Things”
Visual Searching (Grokker and Mooter)
Clustering
Yahoo offering RSS