The Lack of Context in Search
Aug 8th, 2007 by Dan Blank
While Google may seem to be everyone’s starting point on the web, there is still one little problem: context. In order to find what you are looking for, you have to create more detailed search queries, just to get the context for your search. For example, if I search on “speakers,” do I mean stereo speakers or public speakers?
There are plenty of other companies (other than Google, that is) who are working on this. One recent launch is Spock, a search engine for people:
“Here’s a way Spock differs from Google: Type “boxer” into Spock, and its top search results are Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. Type it into Google, and it returns a Wikipedia entry for a “boxer” dog.”
But will you go to Spock to find a person, and to a recipe search engine to find a recipe, and to a dog groomer search engine to find a dog groomer? Likely not.
Adding more context to search cannot come soon enough. Chances are, it you will still be using Google to get this context, once they buy up Spock, and all the other little search engine startups.