I recently presented on "The Future of Search" at a
SEMPO Boston meet-up event. Here's a recap of the presentation's key themes:
- Access: The proliferation of new, more sophisticated devices has played a significant role in when, where and how quickly we conduct searches today, while the evolution of the mobile phone, along with the advent of the netbook and Google's own ChromeOS will contribute to what's expected from search in the future. Read more about ChromeOS and new developments in mobile.
- Localization and personalization: Localization has in particular been influenced by devices we use to access search. Local-based search on mobile devices are increasing. For example, iPhone users conduct 30% more daily queries from Google Maps than do computer users. The social graph will be an important part of ensuring relevant, personalized results. Last quarter, Google released Social Search which allows users to augment their search results with content from friends who they're connected with through their Google profiles. In addition to Social Search, Google just released Google Buzz to allow users to easily share within their Gmail accounts.
- Modes: Search continues to advance due to the way people are searching. Voice search is still in its infancy, but one day voice search technology will be able to process any language and accent. The vision of the omnivorous search box is that anything a user has seen or been exposed to becomes the query. More on Google Voice Search here.
- Media: As people change the way they search, Google has to think beyond text, to images and videos. The first step in this is image recognition where you can search by size, color or type. Check out Google Image Swirl to see the latest in image recognition technology.
- Language: Language ties all of this together. Google's translation services should make it so that the most relevant results are included regardless of language. So, if a user is looking for information about wine in France, they should be able to see the French results translated into the user's native language. Our latest automatic translations in Google Translate allow users to translate between 51 languages (2550 language pairs, including just added Swahili and Afrikaans). Read more about Google's translation services.
For more information on Google product innovations, visit the
Official Google Blog.
Posted by Lisa Green, Agency Team
