Judging from the emails, Tweets and requests for more coverage on how and why human judgment can and must play a role in our search results, I can say my last post on social search created quite a buzz in the blogosphere. I’m happy that an invigorating exchange has followed this post and even more pleased that it has us all  thinking about what I view as the perfect fit between our mobile devices (personal) and our increasing demand for genuinely useful (personalized) results on the move.

I have had this trend high on my radar for several years, a passion that received its first outlet and accolades when EContent magazine gave me free reign to write an in-depth cover story on the state of Social Search (which appeared in the November 2007 issue). I loved researching and writing the article, a work I still regard as one of the best in my career. The good news: I’m told the article had – and continues to have – an impact on the content industry. The not-so-good news: When I wrote the article I was disappointed that so few companies “got” mobile, and today – nearly two years later – only a handful of companies have really have caught on.

To be fair, I wrote the article, aptly titled Teams Work: Social Search Gets Results, before companies such as abphone, ChaCha, Hiogi and Taptu broke on to the scene with strategies that draw on social search approaches and algorithms to improve mobile search results ranking and relevancy. I invite you to read my comments in new-release white papers from abphone and Taptu, and MSG’s own soon-to-be released assessment of the user experience delivered by search engines (among them ChaCha).

But progress is progress, and I am confident that more online social search companies will sharpen their focus on mobile as the advance of mobile social networks and other communities pushes people-powered mobile search to the top of the agenda this year. (In fact, recent reports/stats on Twitter, Facebook, and my own discussions with social networking companies confirm an exciting new trend: We have begun to search in communities – and today the number of queries even exceeds our searches in Google. Connect the dots and a game-changing search paradigm emerges. The power of people + the power of mobile = a power shift in favor of new mobile players who harness the wisdom of mobile crowds.

Where does all this leave mobile operators?

Well, just a week ago I would have said they can watch if they are stupid, and open up their analytics to third-parties (to give critical context to search results) if they are smart. Now, I can say they have a third and far more lucrative option: They can offer a people-powered search service provided by an infrastructure vendor (building on existing front-end analytics capabilities that capture the interests, passions, and profiles of users) to deliver subscribers genuinely useful and relevant search results. And if mobile operators chose to bolt on the mobile advertising module, they can position themselves to offer paid search advertising from a variety of ad networks and keep the lion’s share of the revenues.

You’re reading it in MSG first: Watch for a mobile infrastructure provider to launch a solution that joins existing analytics at the front-end with search and advertising, potentially allowing operators to be equivalent to Google. And watch a mobile operator customer to implement it this year.

I am under NDA and therefore cannot disclose the name of the vendor company, but I can share the details of the search technology and the recent results of a trial test the vendor company conducted with a mobile carrier (a pilot that effectively proves the business case for mobile search powered by mobile searchers (subscribers) and enhanced by operator analytics).

Let’s examine the business case for operator-managed mobile search and advertising.

First, mobile search is not rocket science, nor is it a service that only search engine providers can offer. Search can be broken down into two basic tasks: Indexing the Web to include domains and fresh content in search results; and developing algorithms to assist in ranking and rating the results. It’s not impossible and white-label search providers have shown how this can be accomplished. (They just lost the plot when it came to finding and indexing the content on the wider Web, which is why white-label has lost momentum.) However, for reasons I outline below, mobile operators are positioned to go one better than the solutions that have gone before.

Second, PageRank is not the only game in town. There are many techniques available, not just PageRank, a one-size-fits-all approach pioneered by Google (that as I point out in my post suffers from serious limitations in the mobile space). Operators, because they are close to the customer, can harness social search concepts to improve the experience and the search results. (One to consider is BrowseRank, a new algorithm developed by the vendor company that represents a vast improvement on PageRank because it focuses on the pages people click most often, and correctly assumes that we click these pages because they offer the content and answers we value most.

Third, mobile operators alone have access to the data that matters - directly from us. They know our location and context; our profiles and purchases; the sites we browse; and the search results we think rock (!). As a result, mobile operators don’t have to index the whole of the Web because they know from their usage logs the sites we browse and click (not as individuals, but as a group), and can simply make sure these domains figure prominently in the mobile search results.

This article is continued on Peggy’s blog MSearchGroove here:

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Guest Authors, Mobile, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.