Social Search - The Next Big Thing?

Search technology has been marked by a few big leaps in its history. What began with relatively crude algorithmic analysis of the content of individual pages was improved dramatically by Google’s sophisticated use of off-page criteria, notably PageRank and link anchor text analysis.

While refinements continue - Google now reportedly uses more than a hundred or two criteria in its rankings, held together by complex weighting schemes - the basic nature of search technology hasn’t changed much lately.

To date, search technology has been driven by a couple of goals - one is matching the search results to the intent of the searcher, and the other is preventing manipulation of the results for commercial gain (or, perhaps more simply, preventing spam). Neither of these is an easy task. While todays search results are far superior to those of a decade ago, search engines understandably have a hard time figuring out what someone who searches for “windows help” wants - assistance with upgrading to Vista, learning how to reglaze a broken pane and paint muntins, or something else entirely. Spam prevention is difficult as well, primarily because creative and well-financed SEO practitioners typically find shortcuts to high rankings, whether it’s matching page content to algorithm sweet spots or buying massive quantities of links.

Could social search be the next big leap? Some think so. In