DISQUS

Jenn · 1 year ago

Hi Micah, that was a great post.

I think the trust issue is an interesting one to approach because traditional search engines such as google have more to gain from advertisers and less to gain from providing users with the most accurate and trustworthy result.

I think the first line of search trust is a person's own knowledge and intuition. If you're searching for www.learntoduck.com and the first result is www.learntoduck.com, you're pretty sure that it is an authoritative result. If the first result is www.I-SEOed-this-first-result-haha.com, and the second result is www.learntoduck.com, most people will choose the second result because of their own "self-filter". Self-filters are click agnostic. =)

The second line of trust would fall into unknowns or unknowables that aren't caught by one's own self-filter. I agree that the chain-of-trust in the gateway clicks are where lijit can be of most value over the machine-based search engines, even with the Wikipedias and Mahalos competing for audiences seeking authoritative information.

Chris Brogan... · 1 year ago

I've been thinking more and more about this in the larger picture. I've started thinking that we're going to go backwards on this one a little bit, or rather, there's a hybrid play here for a while.

Meaning, once we know someone's an expert, we'll probably use his or her page before someone else's. When we have no frame of reference, search engines will probably be the first choice.

Mahalo and/or older renditions like About.com when it was starting out, made sense. And then, incentives crept in.

So who knows? But I think you're on to something lijit-imate. : )

Amy Gahran · 1 year ago

Intriguing, Micah -- especially your closing point.

So in practical terms, what can journalists and news org's do with this insight? How can they expand or reinforce trust through awareness of perceptions about search? I'm looking for specific tips I could pass along to my audience of news pros.

- Amy Gahran

Barry Welford · 1 year ago

I think you have a very powerful topic, Micah, and you've brought out the issues well. Given most searchers inability to do good keyword searches, I believe it's most important that on the second click the search engine is still helping you. That means that the first click must bring you to the choices you want to consider. ASK was on to that a long time ago with its Teoma-cluster approach. Thanks for making this issue visible.

Business Letter · 1 year ago

I totally agree with you Micah, but I think that Google and other search engines have those choices because it is searched on their engine more than other choices. If Google were to filter out the other stuff, what if someone tries to look for it and can't ever find it. So pretty much won't you get the same problem as before? Anyways, it is always good to read what you have to say and I do always get crappy results too, but hey nothing we can do about it if Google is getting paid to put it there.