At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week, Stanley K. Burrell, a man better known as MC Hammer, a former rapper, dancer, actor, ordained minister and now web entrepreneur, announced WireDoo: a new search engine with a focus on ‘deep search’.
Hammer’s spectacular rise and fall from fame in the 1990s has been well documented, but his foray into the competitive world of search may just see him back in the spotlight, if WireDoo’s “Search once, see what’s related” premise proves a hit.
The idea is to move past the keyword mentality, providing the user with a more holistic search experience by answering queries with as much related information as possible, rather than Google’s method of providing the most accurate match for a keyword. Where Google users may need to craft their search in a language more Google than human in order to get the answer they are looking for, Hammer’s ‘relationship search’ could provide a more natural experience.
The example given by the man himself is a search for a town or postcode, which along with basic search results would also yield listings for the local schools, hospitals, real estate and so on. Clicking through to the schools results would display the teaching staff, average exam results, expulsion rates and more.
Hammer may not be alone in recognising a gap in Google’s algorithm with WireDoo’s relational search functionality.
Web communities like Quora have found favour with users by providing a more immediate and human response to search queries which may not yield a particularly helpful response from Google. A search for a Google-tailored keyword like “best restaurants Sydney” provides results that are arguably more algorithm than human, but in a user-generated and reviewed environment such as Quora, a similar query will be answered by real and often authoritative people, providing a new and more authentic search experience.
The growth of Quora can be attributed to a growing demand for human response, one that Google is responding to with Google+, annotating search results with recommendations and comments from a user’s social circle, as well as giving credence to Facebook likes and relevant tweets in search results.
With 87% of the market share in Australia, Google has plenty of reason to answer the call for more human search results, but it remains to be seen how effective Google+ will be in doing so. If able to anticipate the search conversation by providing highly relevant related information and taking into consideration user-specific social signals, thereby steering away from keyword queries and minimising search time, a new search platform whether WireDoo or not, could provide an engaging alternative.
Is MC Hammer the man for the job? Asides from the 50 million record sales and groundbreaking parachute pants, he has been investing in tech start-ups and social media for years, lecturing on the subject at Harvard Business School in 2009.
Please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em.
Rory Heffernan
SEO Strategist
AtomicSearch
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