Search 4.0
Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ:
The Future of Search blog writes about wanting to put humans back in search:
Previously I’ve covered what I dubbed Search 3.0,
how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized
results into “regular” web listings. Today, the step beyond that:
Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to
refine search results.
The Search Evolution So Far
Before going ahead, let me summarize what I covered in my past article, in terms of how search engines have changed over time to create and rank the results you get when doing a search:
- Search 1.0 (1996): Pages ranked using “on-the-page” criteria
- Search 2.0 (1998): Pages ranked using “off-the-page” criteria
- Search 3.0 (2007): Vertical search results blended into regular search results
The evolution above is not perfect. For one thing, some “Search 3.0″
blending started to happen years before 2007. It’s just that in 2007, I
felt all the major search engines made the leap into Search 3.0 in a
significant way.
…
Search 4.0: The Human Factor
Onward to Search 4.0! As I said in my opening, to me this is the
move for search engines to make use of human data as part of their
ranking systems. In particular, it means human data generated by you,
by those you know or by human editors.
Search engines already make use of some human data. All the major
search engines, for example, monitor what we click on within the search
results. This helps them determine if a particular listing is drawing
more or less clicks than would be expected for the position it holds.
For example, if the number two listing for a particular query is
getting less clicks than “normal” for a listing in that spot, perhaps
it’s a bad quality listing that should be replaced with another.
Another example: all the…