The last panel on Tuesday morning was the best one of the conference, I thought. It seemed the panelists were the best prepared or had the most interesting things to say, which tends to evoke the best array of questions. If I had to vote for the best panelist, it would be Jeff Weiner of Yahoo, followed closely by Rich Barton of hotter-than-a.pngstol real-estate search site Zillow. But the other two, Omid Kordestani of Google and Ellen Siminoff of Efficient Frontier (and a member of the founding team at Yahoo) 
were quite good, too. Esther Dyson kicked things off by referring to some pundit’s remark that search was as good as it’s going to get. “I don’t agree,” said Jeff Weiner. “Search is the great democratizer,” and he says lots more good stuff is coming — “like voting on search results and other Web 2.0 stuff.” But he also made an excellent point: that for a company to really take advantage of search, it needs a smart webmaster (read: for SEO and SEM), or to “be wealthy enough to hire that out.” As an example of something new, Weiner also offered up “Yahoo Answers,” a service whereby anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer. It’s essentially a knowledge search service, he said, which had a December beta launch.
In an attempt to provoke some friendly discussion between the rivals, Esther asked, “Does it come down to algorithms like Google versus people like Yahoo?” No, said Weiner, “They’re not mutually exclusive.” Zillow’s Barton then put in a hard plug for MSN search (former Microsoftie that he is). He said it has more tools to help him with his searching. (He got no rise out of Google or Yahoo on that.) But the most interesting thing Barton had to offer up at this point in the discussion was an analogy to cosmology. “The experts believe only 4% of the universe is visible,” he said, “which is about the same percentage of knowledge you can get at with today’s search.” Finding that “dark matter and lighting it up” is where the opportunity lies. He said, “We found a ‘galaxy’ that’s really interesting” in Zillow. “We knew people were ga-ga about houses, but we didn’t know how much!” In just four-and-a-half weeks, millions have already visited the site, according to Barton. Esther commented on how people are finding new uses for it, too, which Barton admitted his team really hadn’t expected — such as using it in recruiting, as a reference-checking tool, and even for dating research. Yes, you may change your opinion of that loser in the bar when you see where he/she lives….
Where else is there room for improvement in search? Ellen Siminoff says local search is an area ripe for advances — “a long way to go there.” Yahoo’s Weiner talked about how untapped the universe of content is right now. “There are 750 trillion objects put there” (don’t ask me where he gets such a number), and “only 0.0058% of it is indexed today.” So, search startups, start your engines…
“What percent of searches are purposeful, such as work-related, versus just idle surfing?” asked Esther. “Virtually 100% of them,” said Weiner. “Filling idle time is a purpose in itself.” He also noted that search is “increasingly becoming more of a media model.” Siminoff noted that the search engines are not yet taking advantage of determining the real purpose of the search. “It’s been more about the commercial aspect, but only about half of searches today are monetizeable.”
In response to a question about metadata, Weiner make the comment that the word “meme” is popping up in regard to that these days. (See Wikipedia page defining “Meme”.) He said “Maybe we need a ‘Why’ button under a search ad that tells me why I’m getting this ad.” He also noted that, for tagging to work, the value received must exceed the effort put in to do the tagging. “But we need to work on that ‘meme’ word, to make it more user-friendly.”
Weiner went on to say that there’s “radical change on the web…people like to share and be an authority.” He noted that someone had referred recently to photo-sharing site Flickr (now part of Yahoo) as “a culture of generosity.” Which provoked an audience questioner to say: “People want to help other people. It isn’t about machines versus people. It’s all models.” Weiner agreed that different models are needed, including vertical search such as Zillow.
“What other opportunity?” Esther challenged the panelists. “There is lots of dark matter out there,” said Zillow’s Barton. “Healthcare immediately comes to mind.” And another two, said Yahoo’s Weiner, would be “legal search and opinion-based search.” What about better analyzing search results?asked an audience member. “We have Yahoo Buzz,” said Weiner, “and others have things that get at this.” Barton said Zillow even has a feature that’s like a stock chart, showing the value of a house over time. Not to be outdone, Weiner said Yahoo is working on a marketplace for ideas, in conjunction with O’Reilly Media.
“What about new user interfaces, new experiences?” asked an audience member. Barton said search engines have a problem: “They’re stuck in the box” (the search box). “UI designers at these companies are dying to get out of it,” but can’t afford to tick off users (or maybe don’t want to go first?). Another question was about “in-context” search, which is actually part of the basic technology of the Internet, according to the questioner, but hasn’t been fully exploited yet. “Why isn’t more known about it?” he asked. That didn’t really get an answer out of any of the panelists — which tends to make we wonder which of them could secretly be working on it(?). Finally, an audience question from Seth Goldstein of Root Markets: “Will Google or Yahoo allow users to take their search activity data with them?” (Meaning, let it be portable.) Both said yes, that it belongs to them. Hey, more power to the user!
Bill Burnham just posted an excellent analysis on his blog, Burnham’s Beat, of next-generation search technology, including a look at two newer startups: Vast and Kosmix, the latter a company that presented at PC Forum.
Here’s a piece on the topic of search at PC Forum from another freelance writer I met at the conference, Jeanette Borzo. She wrote the piece for The Economist, and it’s entiled Let the Search Wars Begin. She makes many of the same points I did and offers other interesting insights as well.
Okay, yet *another* great search piece I just caught, this one from MediaPost. It’s a recap of a talk given by John Batelle a couple nights ago in NYC, called Searching With Batelle.
A followup on Zillow: the company is announcing today a new feature on their site: bird’s eye, low-altitude photographs of certain U.S. residential neighborhoods, via a deal with Microsoft.