Bambi Francisco

Google's community search

Google's analyst day thoughts. 1) Google is testing out community-based searches along the lines of the companies I've been writing about, such as PreFound (Tuesday's Net Sense), Plum, Jeteye and Kaboodle. Google's Co-op product (in beta of course) is a way for thought-leaders, guides, experts to share their searches. Essentially, anyone can sign up by going to Google.com/coop and create a page of things they've searched for and assign or label it with a topic that can be searched by someone else. Similar to the other aforementioned services I had written about, I can create a topic, say "Hawaii" and put all the information I searched about into that page. Others can collaborate on that topic as well. That page is public for others to search on. As an expert on that topic Hawaii, I become a guide of sorts. It's the About model reborn. The difference is that these guides are found in a search paradigm. With Google's co-op program, the search giant can create verticals rich with information created by people. I think it's a great idea because communities do add a layer of relevance above and beyond what machines can do.
2) Google's Schmidt said that social networks are great, but they don't make any money. He was elaborating on a question I asked about whether MySpace having its own search engine would be a concern to Google. He said that he'd like to get involved with social networks by helping them make money. I asked if he had to partner with these communities, like MySpace. He just smiled, suggesting that I could probably figure out whether Google would want to or not.  3) I asked if Google is building AdWords for video, and whether he thought AdWords for video would work. He said that if someone invents AdWords for Google, he'd check it out. 4) I was testing out my Logitech Webcam to do video interviews. It worked fine when I interviewed Esther Dyson, but unfortunately, by the time I tried to interview Google executives, it didn't work. Oh well. Technology isn't perfect. For instance, all day Google's WiFi network failed to work.

Myspace-engine

If MySpace had a search engine, wouldn't that ruffle the feathers at Google, MSN and Yahoo? It's a question worth contemplating at a time when the online search industry's Big Three are spending billions to supply better search results, and in the process get marketers to spend more ad bucks on those search pages. Additionally, paid search -- estimated to be a $7 billion market this year -- could be the No. 1 revenue source for MySpace. You can bet that MySpace, the leading social networking site on the Web, will be making inroads into search soon. Rupert Murdoch is no dummy. Why else would his News pend nearly $600 million on MySpace and not go after the most lucrative and biggest part of the online ad pie?

As I pointed out in a recent column, MySpace is a whole new distribution platform that is changing the face of the Net. In March, MySpace recorded 19.4 billion page views vs. 13.7 billion at Google, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.   With MySpace's traffic so significant, I had a hunch that major sites like Google and Yahoo might also receive a lot of benefit from that traffic. That hunch was right. Google received 8.2% of its traffic partly from its search tools that appear on pages within MySpace, making the social network the No. 1 source of traffic to Google, according to Bill Tancer of online research firm Hitwise, who retrieved the data for me.

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McClatchy's Triangle

Take a look at some of the local sites that McClatchy is starting to roll out and essentially you'll see that they're a Craigslist meets CitySearch-like service, behind a Google-like façade. To illustrate Christian Hendricks' localized Internet strategy, have a look at the first search site McClatchy launched last quarter. It's called Triangle.com and it focuses on communities served by McClatchy papers in North Carolina. As Greg Sterling, an expert on local advertising, said to me in an email: "McClatchy seems to 'get it' more than others."

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch