Google for Breakfast? You’re Gonna Love it in an Instant

Last Wednesday Google announced the release of “Google Instant,” which extends search to near real-time results as keywords are entered. Similar to the now common use of AJAX scripting that finishes your text entry (based on previous and common entries), Instant runs and displays query results based on your input. The questions I have are simple:

1. Does this help or hinder search and find efforts?
2. What is the impact on advertising impressions, and thereby revenue, for both Google and its customers?

First, let’s merge a coupe threads here (computer/Internet speed or performing searches and human cognition/focus on answers). The first thread is simply the speed of which computers can conduct meaningful Internet searches. All things considered, it’s pretty fast. The second thread isn’t known, but contains the most meaningful information. The second one deals with how astute a person is when performing a search. Anything that interferes or disrupts a cognitive processs is noise. I think I’m beginning to channel my inner Nicholas Carr here. A crying child, a memorable song or tune, a coworker’s weekend story, a curious noise, hunger pain, and a million other things all get in the way of our thinking. When we move disruptions onto the digital media, it becomes all the easier. While most of us can hum a tune and type a search, they’re largely different modes of behavior and thinking. Avoiding distractions inside the same media or device for that matter (computer or mobile device) becomes much more difficult. It’s far too easy to open several tabs in a browser and have four, five or six different cognitive things going at one time. All of those things influence how we search, the terms we enter, and what we do with the information. [While you’re reading this, try *not* to click over to another application, device, or tab!]

Second, we also know that people are incredibly skilled at manipulating data to improve search index scoring (Search Engine Optimization, SEO). What we don’t know is how frequently users are performing specific kinds of searches. There are at least four main types of searches: exhaustive, exploratory, known-item, and re-find. Exhaustive – find everything on topic X. Exploratory – find things related to this attribute of topic X. Known-item – find X. Re-find – find X and only X again. Pretty basic stuff. When users come to a search engine there’s nothing that captures why the user is looking for information. While that sounds kind of lame, boring or unnecessary, think about it. If Google asked one question, “Why are you searching?” it would be better suited to target tools to that user. Doing a re-find? Start with the users most recent search data in memory (cookies, cache, browser history, recent pages). Just browsing? Recalculate and cluster pages using a different algorithm to better weight SEO optimized or AdWord sites with lower scored pages (like blogs or older web content) that typically fall in the high page number results.

The current implementation of Google Instant only serves to perpetuate the myth that my “answer” lies in results above the scroll. It also introduces cognitive noise by short-circuiting the knowledge process. Again, rather than collecting more data, Google is beginning to assert that it knows enough to start giving information. Not only is the search window giving me possible text in the entry field, but showing results and advertisements that now serve to further influence what users enter (or at the very least, when they choose to ‘tab/opt out’ of thinking). People are generally lazy. People will either select the keywords given that appear “close enough” to give an answer or chase the rabbit of a link that sounds promising. Neither of which is enriching or improving search. Its just faster data, not knowledge.

Google is laying claim to productivity increases by reducing the amount of time spent searching. CNN.com Money reprted that “Google predicts Instant can save 2-5 seconds on a typical search, which now averages 9 seconds.” For my mobile browser use, this will be great…when it gets there. Anythig that reduces the amount of time that it takes to transmit data is an improvement. But when it comes to typical desktop/laptop Internet use is a 4-7 second search really that long? I don’t think the average person knows nor calculates how long they spend searching. If anything, they probably spend an inordinate amount of time coming up with the keywords to enter to get at information that they intuitively know has an answer or home on the web. Again, tailoring why the user is looking for information is likely a better solution to this problem versus sending them more information faster. If I’m a fire fighter with a hose, I’d rather know where to aim the stream compared to more volume or a wider spray.

Towards question two, I think it will be interesting to see how marketers, advertisers, and SEO professionals respond to this change. Not that Instant creates a radical shift in AdWords or the ability to optimize pages. But by Google’s own admission, they are reducing the time it takes to perform a search which leads to one of two surface conclusions: 1) reduced time for users to scan results and take interest in a sponsored link, or 2) higher monetary value for those few, high ranking, rapid-response areas. Neither of which is great news for the online advertisers.

Faced with the growing use of mobile phones and browsers, which diminishes the usable real estate to a 2″x3″ window (on average), online marketing is now faced with reduce impression time on the world’s most prominent search engine. Does this mean that Google can charge more for this high end property? Will we see a raise in the cost of SEO studios and practitioners?

[Google] Wave Bye-Bye

Did you hear that Google’s going to build an app to kill Facebook?

Someone actually came up to me and said this. Not just once, but several times I have heard this from various sources. Each time the person wants to speak as if 1) they are imparting some piece of knowledge to me that I would never know (like they have an insider’s secret), and 2) they speak as if this is a critical point in our social media evolution. My typical response includes two points. First, who cares if they build a competitor? Second, they won’t win.

The MBA in me says, competition is a good thing. In any environment, competition (on strength, ideas, products, services – you name it) separates the best from the worst. Good ideas get lauded, bad behavior gets scolded. It works. I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg isn’t worried about competiton when he’s got a 500 million user head start.

That leads to the second point, Google won’t be able to build a better mouse trap. Not if they’re targeting Facebook as the only game in town. Some time around 2003, Sony Consumer Electronics CEO stated that the company was going to build “the ipod killer.” More to present day, companies are trying to build “ipad killers.” Therein lies the rub. Stop trying to compete on impersonation rather than innovation.

If Google thinks that the target, sweet spot for social networking sites is to build a bigger, better Facebook – they’re wrong. Facebook *is* Facebook. That ship has sailed.

The way you compete on innovation is build something that people haven’t seen or used that intices them to puts parts of themselves on one platform over another. Think different. Build hte “next thing” not an imitation of what exists.

If Twitter asks, “What are you doing?” And FourSquare asks, “Where are you?” What are the other social questions that people ask or need answered? For example, someone please build me the app that answers, “What’s your weather like?” {Yes, I’m giving out free ideas that can make you millions. No $3,000 cashiers check on file.} Yes, I can download a weather.com app for my Droid, but it’s still just National Weather Service info. It will rain cats ‘n dogs at my office and be dry as a bone at my house. That’s over a 20+ mile area. If I could find out what weather is doing currently across my 20 mile radius (from GPS) that would be of interest. Relatively not too hard to build from Tweets, Google Earth, and local forecasts. But it would tailor information to my local interest. Imagine having that service if you’re a trucker and have to be in three different regions over the next four days, or on a boat and need to take cover under the nearest bridge to wait out an approaching rain spat.

But I understand that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s also the biggest way to increase margins (MBA guy’s back). Harvard Business Review ran an article that pointed out the financial pitfalls of innovating versus imitating.

Lastly, earlier this month we had the formal announcement that Google is scrapping Google Wave. Does this signify that “Big G” is out of the social networking market? Hardly. Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of operations at Google, stated that, “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked.” Adoption is the key to growth in the social media world. Google messed that up by making the ability to get a wave account more of a klugey process. With other social media, I sign up, I sign in, and I’m working. Anything that slows that process should be eliminated. In their zeal to enter the market, they seem to have forgotten the simplicity of their search engine and instead, let the inmates run the asylum resulting in an over-engineered product.

Google can and will be in the social media equation. For now, their actions are looking far more like their software uncle (Microsoft) as opposed to Internet cousins (Facebook).