Next Generation People Powered Search Engines

Twitter is a great tool for b2c product marketers to understand public reaction immediately. There is no doubt that it has revolutionized both online and offline marketing efforts.

Twitter Power = real people + real time + minimum words + free + simple + Summize (to be integrated soon)

However, this is not a post on Twitter.

This post is about the next generation people powered search engines.

Wait a minute; there are thousands of search engines around the web to serve definite purposes – why do we need another search engine?

Wait two minutes; we have thousands of social bookmarking websites to discover new pages and they are people powered in the truest sense of the term– why should we bother about another search engine.

Come on, how many people even know about search engines in their own niche? General people are not web freak like you – they still use Google, Yahoo or MSN to search for what they want. (BTW, do they really know or do they really bother about why they are using a search engine to find something! I have no idea.)

Do you really use Artcyclopedia to search for an artwork? I doubt – you know your search habits better.

What about social bookmarking websites?

Come on, they are far from being a complete people powered search engine. They are not crawlers – they just depend on what people like you and me feed them – they do not have the need to offer the best results on any given topic to stay in the market like Google or Yahoo.

So, what the hell are people powered search engines?

Google does it indirectly (perhaps) – there are certain rumors in the market that Google tracks user experience while deciding the overall ranking of a website. What if Google asks the visitor to rate the site he or she has just visited! (Google has already started experimenting with a Digg like interface.) However, in this case, your rating is only for you when you search for the same term again in Google. Google is yet to declare if your rating would affect the overall ranking of a website throughout the user base or not.

Therefore, what are the elements of a people powered search engine:

1. It should be a powerful crawler to find new pages on its own. 
2. It should have both rating and tagging system.
3. It should track if the user is really taking a decision (like buying the product or bookmarking it to use later etc.) to determine the actual value of the rating itself.
4. It should be powerful enough to fight with spam.

Some problem areas:

1. As I mentioned in point number 3, it must develop a system to evaluate the quality of the rating.
2. The biggest problem is search habits – search engines have millions of pages for a competitive keyword in their index. However, general visitors do not like to visit beyond third or fourth page to find what they are looking for (this does not mean that search engines are great to offer the best results). Thus, it is very tough for a new website to get visitors even though it may offer some great solutions to the visitor’s need. In addition, if a new website does not get visitors there are high chances that it would never be able to rank high in a people powered search engine.
3. Big and well-established brands and websites would have more chances to get more visitors from people powered search engines.
4. Rather than showing the rating button on the SERP they must develop a system (may be as a toolbar component) to rate a website while the visitor is actually leaving the page.          

What else?

I know there are so many other issues that need to be considered… But, aren’t these big enough to start?
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5 Things I Learnt as a Sales Man

I had a great experience yesterday.

We (our company) normally work for overseas clients – mainly from UK, USA and Australia. And thus we do not have an active sales and marketing team here in Kolkata. (My job responsibilities are content development, on-page optimization, online marketing strategy development and implementation etc…).

But day before yesterday, the big boss called me up and asked me if I could visit a prospective client and more importantly if I could manage some time away from my cube. (This is the beauty of working with small companies (employee strength 50-100) – you can move between different departments).

WOW – I was so excited – I don’t want to spend my whole life in a cube… lol.

I just jumped up to it (as I always do to any odd job) and my boss gave me a brief about the client.

Yesterday I visited the client and spent around 2 exciting hours in their board room to understand their needs and to prepare a customized solution for them. Cool (this was my first face to face client interaction)…

I would again visit them on Tuesday to finalize the deal (fingers crossed).

People used to shut the door on our faces and we used to talk to our souls that the next door is a new one and we may find some good luck there.

I am not a hardcore sales man but I started my career as a sales man for a newly launched newspaper in Kolkata. At the moment I just appeared for my 12th exam and had nothing to do for three months (awaiting results).

That was an awesome job – we started early in the morning (6 AM to 9AM - Working Hours) – used to visit one door to another and asked people if they would like to try our newspaper (hey I was not a newspaper hawker anyways :)).

The biggest challenge for us was the fact that we were actually asking someone to change his or her habit. We did not offer free newspapers or any special discounts. The only motivation for change was the change itself.

People don’t need your product – they need a solution to their problem.

In the initial days I could not understand what I was asking the person to do. And no one taught us what to do after someone opened the door – we never knew what to say or how to start. But we managed somehow in the initial days and later we found that we developed an imaginary communication script.

Gradually I understood a few things (real life experience… lol):

1. Newspaper is a habit – you know what is there in your newspaper; you know where is the sports section and where is the editorial (It would be terrible if newspapers changed page element arrangements everyday). You know which supplement is there and who is going to write the sub-editorial today (do you really read the sub editorial!!). 
2. More importantly the reader is accustomed with the language and writing style and voice of a newspaper. (would you like to decode hieroglyphics early in the morning)
3. A newspaper is read by each member of a family for different reasons. You can’t close the sale by answering to the decision maker’s questions alone. You will have to solve the problems of each and every reader of the family. Sometimes I found families who had been reading their newspaper for last 30 years. (Isn’t it tough to instigate a sustainable change in a 30 years old habit?)
4. Don’t start unless you have understood their need and don’t take too much time to understand what they need. 
5. People don’t need your product – they need a solution to their problem. 

People used to shut their doors on our faces (who would like to talk to a sales man so early in the morning – this is insane). And we used to talk to our spirited souls that the next door is a new one and we may find some good luck.

BTW, that was a commission based job and we were paid only for the successful subscription. And those few months changed my outlook, my attitude to works...
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