8 replies to this topic

[robertclough]

http://news.com.com/..._3-5061873.html

Snippet:
A stealth start-up out of Stanford University is hoping to raise the heat on one of the toughest problems in Web search--and possibly out-Google Google in the process.

[bwelford]

Thanks for highlighting this. It's probably the most important indicator of what the future may hold.

All the search engines aim to deliver "Relevancy". But this is a product-driven view of relevancy, independent of the customer.

Adopting a customer-centric view of Relevancy pushes you to what Kaltix is trying to deliver. Although you have to give up a bit of privacy if you want the search engine to deliver relevant results for you, I think it's a great trade-off. This will also stop all the nonsense about getting a #1 ranking on Google, etc.

A great find - let's hope they can deliver the bacon soon!

Barry Welford.

[Scottie]

I think it would be great to have another true player in the search game. Go Kaltix!

[darciusrex]

Yeah, it does sound great. But being naturally abnormally paranoid, how much privacy is too much and where is the line drawn? I realize with every search we do we're giving up information about ourselves that can be found and used by anybody for whatever reasons. And I guess that's a part of living in a modern, electronic society. But it creeps me out enough to think the Feds can zoom outta' nowhere and pick me up at anytime, and now maybe marketing wizards could do the same. Damn inventor of the wheel! Who knew how far technology would and still has to go!

Other than the paranoid rant, I think this is an interesting idea and concept! Like Barry, I just wonder if it'll deliver.

[darciusrex]

ps- robertclough, yoiu run an awesome newsletter as well! Between you and Jill, I feel like I'm good hands! Keep up the good work!

[Peter]

Hi everybody,

It seems interesting,... personalized search,... but it also seems so limited. Besides the privacy problem, I can not imagine it will ever be popular.

A personalized search, will show you sites that fit you only, or at least put those sites higher in your SERP. That is what it means, if I understood it right.

I always like to compare to the real world, so what would be the real world equivelent of this? Go to the mall, wearing very special glasses that will make it impossible to see the shops that you are not interested in. (or at least the search engine thinks you are not interested in.) That doesn't work,.. who will determine what I can and cannot see? Until I was 18,.. my parents, and after that, I myself.

Nobody will allow their view be blocked, unless they specifically choose to do so. Google (and others) has this option already, you can choose to filter certain types of content from your results.

I believe just comming up with better results will be the key and most popular way.

And even if they do get this personalized search of the ground, it won't change much from an SEO point of view. Good SEO means giving the people (and not just the search engines) what they want. That really will be the same in the future. Maybe some new html code and other similar things too, but that will keep happening no matter what,.. it is called progress....

Best regards,

Peter

[Matt B]

This is definitely the future of search. Thank God those ranking reports will soon be irrelevant! In theory, my rankings will not be the same as my client's rankings as their supplier's rankings will be on the same keyword. Which is not a bad thing at all.

I think to some extent even if you choose not to give personal information, as search engine can easily learn what type of information you search for by session. Applying some sort of tracking in an individual search session and any returning visits in a short period of time may be enough to provide a filter for the types of sites a specific user tends to click to.

However, I think there will be a good chunk of people willing to tell a little about themselves, (and opt out of any email lists), in order to receive targeted search results. Spend 3 minutes to save countless hours? It may be an easy sell.


Matt

[Phil CK]

This sounds to me very like the paper from Stanford on Topic Sensitive Page Rank written by Taher H. Haveliwala.

In that paper they discussed 2 areas of filtering results in detail :

1. Using ODP categories to tailor the results displayed
2. Context sensitive (ie. search from within a page to give a guide as to the topic)

and then mentioned in passing the possibilty of true personalised results, but didn;t detail. From what I can remember it was all about effectively keeping a log of the searches you make on your local machine to then help filter future results. So taking the example in this article & then one from the Standford piece results, personalised results could be :

Jaguar - Is this the car or animal ?
Blues - Is this a style of music, a medical state or a colour ?

However, the article basically suggested it'd take too much computational power to achieve this (at the moment), and therefore stage 1 of the journey was to offer filtering based on ODP categories.

Does anyone know who's involved with Kaltix... is it Taher H. Haveliwala ?

(Subnote to myself.... really must finish that "article" on Topic Sensitive Page Rank and put it up here at High Rankings )

[darciusrex]

I was thinking on my way home the other day that, while I admit I'm unsure of the implications, the Kaltix engine could make SEO that much more important. Branding your site as one worthy of visiting that fits into a specific need would pay off- assuming yoiu eventually get picked up. I guess what I'm trying to say is Kaltix may stick it to the Spammers! In theory, because no one prefers or wants spammy sites, Kaltix would have to weed them out!